Six Travellers in Search of an Author — A Guide to Berlin Review

If you are looking for a practical guidebook to help you navigate the city of Berlin, Vladimir Nabokov's 1925 short story A Guide to Berlin, despite its name, probably isn't the best place to start. It does, however, capture the very essence of the city during a particular details, focusing on the minute details many would consider mundane. Likewise, Gail Jones's new novel of the same name explores certain aspects of the city—especially its literary and cultural heritage—through the eyes of six foreigners.

Cass, an Australian, has just arrived in Berlin and has ambitions of being a writer — "a universal affliction," she confesses. While visiting the Nestorstrasse house in which Nabokov lived during the 1930s, Cass meets Marco, a literature student turned estate agent and fellow Nabokov fan. Convinced that she will fit in perfectly with his group of close friends — all admirers of Nabokov — Marco persuades Cass to join them at their next gathering. The others are, for the most part, writers or would-be writers: Gino from Rome, Victor from the US, and Yukio and Mitsuko from Tokyo.

They meet once or twice a week to talk and drink, rotating nomadically through different apartments. Each time, they share stories with one another. These aren't long and comprehensive autobiographies, but single 'speak-memories', structured very much like the best short stories, focusing in on the most intricate details of significant events in their lives and of their own connections to Nabokov. Structured, in some ways, like Nabokov's own A Guide to Berlin. These stories are always beautiful and often sad and they make Cass, and thus the reader, feel an intimate connection to the storyteller even though she knows very little about her new friends.

The friends become close, seeking comfort in one another as the bitter coldness of the Berlin winter begins to set in. In the third act, however, something happens that completely alters the tone and mood of the novel, bringing into question the robustness of these new friendships and testing the loyalty of the friends.

Like the speak-memories it includes, Jones's novel is beautifully constructed, intriguing and with meticulous attention to detail. Even before the darker pages of the final section, a sense of loneliness and dolefulness echoes through the words; the inescapable loneliness of travellers — expats and exiles — who aren't home and can't go home, perhaps. The cold greyness of city contrasts starkly with the bright pops of colour — the tulips and neon signs — which don't seem to offer much comfort. Interestingly, the Australian cover of the novel depicts the greyness and the snow, while the UK edition bursts with colour in its design inspired by a U-bahn map.

Disclaimer: A Guide to Berlin will be published in the UK in January 2016. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

July Favourites

1. Honest Burgers Karma Cola special. It's no secret that I think Honest Burgers' signature burger — the eponymous Honest Burger — is one of my top three burgers in London. They also do monthly specials, but the Honest Burger is so near-perfect that it takes a good 'un to tempt me away. This month's special is a cola-boration with Karma Cola and sounded so epic that I couldn't say no. For £11.50 (£12.50 if you order a Karma Cola too) you get an amazing burger with smoked cheddar, Karma-Cola-braised beef, pickles and chilli coleslaw. Oh, and the standard Honest rosemary chips (NB, standard isn't the right word, because they are awesome).

Unsurprisingly, the result is delicious. But if that isn't motivation enough, £1 from every burger sold is being donated to the Karma Cola Foundation, the proceeds of which go to support cola nut growers in West Africa. Everybody wins.

2. Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. Regular readers will know that I'm a regular reader—I'm currently reading my 93rd book of the year—and I'm always looking for inspiration for the next book on my e-reader. This means that when I discover a writer I like, I tend to make my way through their back catalogue. There are five books so far in French's series about the (fictional) Dublin Murder Squad. Each book is narrated by a different detective and involves a contemporary crime that also links back to the detective's past. The narrator will often have been a minor character in the previous book.

I actually read the latest book in the series, The Secret Place, last year, but have since been working my way through in chronological order. My favourite so far is The Likeness, in which Detective Cassie Maddox goes undercover to try to work out who killed a woman who looked just like her. She goes to live in the house of the murdered woman—a graduate student with friends that evoke Donna Tartt's The Secret History—but finds her objectivity wavering as she becomes more involved with her doppelgänger's life. French combines compelling plots, engaging and flawed narrators, and beautiful, suspenseful prose. Be warned, though, because she isn't fond of endings where everything is tied up neatly.

3. Southerden SE1. I've walked past the tempting windows of Southerden's Bermondsey Street café and patisserie many times, but by the time I make it to Bermondsey Street on a Saturday, I've already had at least one doughnut as part of the SoLoDo running club. Luckily for me, though, Southerden also occupies one of the arches on Dockley Road, as part of the Spa Terminus Market on Saturday mornings.

It took me a while to choose among the delicious-looking sweet treats, but in the end, it had to be a doughnut and I loved the sound of the pineapple doughnut, topped with a dried pineapple ring. It didn't quite have the sinful ooziness of Bread Ahead and St John doughnuts, but it was bloomin' tasty nonetheless. Get them straight from the oven at Unit 11, Dockley Road.

4. Chinatown. I've now watched enough films on Netflix for its movie recommendations to be halfway decent. I was pleased when Chinatown popped up as a suggestion because I haven't seen it in years and I'd forgotten how much I liked it. Great performances from Faye Dunaway and especially Jack Nicholson, great plot, great twists: this is gritty noir at its best.

5. Futurama. Most of the TV shows I watch are pretty dark, or at least dramatic, so I like to keep a lighter show on the go too. After I rewatched all of Friends, I moved on to Futurama, of which I've probably seen a handful of episodes over the years but I never really got into it. Several of my friends are big fans, though, and I keep missing out on their jokes, so I'm binge-watching my way through the archives. A couple of seasons in, I think it's great! I'm very late to this party, I know, but if you like witty, sharp animated sci-fi shows, you won't be disappointed. It's set in the 31st century, so it doesn't matter that it first aired in 1999—it's aged very well!

"Everything You Have Ever and Never Done"

I missed Nick Payne's play Constellations during its 2012 run at the Royal Court and I was even more disappointed to just miss its Broadway incarnation with Jake Gyllenhaal and the always excellent Ruth Wilson this spring. I like going to the theatre but I'm never very good at keeping on top of what is on, so I was pleased that I scanned the theatre section of last week's Time Out and noticed that Constellations was back for a limited run at the Trafalgar Studios and even happier that I managed to score some cheap tickets for the Saturday matinee.

Constellations tells the story—or, rather, stories—of Marianne (Louise Brealey), an astrophysicist, and Roland (Joe Armstrong), a bee-keeper, who meet at a barbecue. Marianne tells a weird anecdote about elbow licking, but Roland isn't impressed and they don't click. But then they meet at a barbecue and they do click. Above the stark black stage hang dozens of white balloons and every few minutes, different balloons light up and we see a different version of the same scene. The story moves along, sometimes incrementally and sometimes with long time-jumps, and we start to see different versions of their relationship that could have happened.

As in any relationship (or any possible version of any relationship), sometimes things go well, and other times, sad things happen. Intermittently, we also get snapshots from a time much further in the future. We see the same scene several times, but each time, there is slightly more dialogue and slightly more context, which allow us to gradually piece together what is happening.

It is a beautiful play, only 70 minutes long but extremely intense. It's often sad and moving, but it's also funny in places, particularly in some of the variations early on in the relationship. "I f*cking love honey," one Marianne tells one Roland; it's her delivery that's key. Constellations is also very philosophical, and Marianne's job as a physicist allows her to introduce questions of time and of infinite possible worlds. She talks about "everything you have ever and never done," and then later tells Roland: "We still have all the time we've ever had."

Marianne gets the best lines and she is, perhaps, the more interesting character, but Roland makes a great foil. The chemistry between Brealey and Armstrong is fantastic and essential for such a production to work. In some ways, the play reminded me of Patrick Marber's Closer; in particular, the scenes when Marianne and Roland argue made me think of the devastating break-up between Larry and Anna (portrayed wonderfully on-screen by Clive Owen and Julia Roberts). The work with which I drew most connections, though, was Laura Barnett's novel The Versions of Us, which I read recently. Both look at all of the ways characters and relationships could have developed—and maybe have even developed in other possible worlds—and highlight questions of fate, love and what forever really means.

I mentioned the minimalist set design further up, but the play is also visually impressive. It was a nice touch to have the black floor printed with a hexagon grid, which seemed to be symbolic of Roland's beekeeping work (which also proves relevant to the story), whereas the white flashing balloons represented, to me, the infinite universe that Marianne studies.

By the end of Constellations, I was feeling emotionally exhausted but curious. If you're in the mood for a beautiful and thought-provoking play about love, life and even theoretical physics, then do try to get tickets. Unfortunately, this run ends on 1st August, so you'll need to act pretty swiftly.

Last Will and Testament

I don’t often write about TV — I tend to watch only two or three shows at any one time — but the latest episode of The Good Wife is a biggie. If you haven’t watched the episode, look away now and go and watch it, because huge spoilers will follow.


I started watching The Good Wife soon after its début in 2009 and it soon replaced Mad Men as my favourite TV show. I love the combination of the case-of-the week (which satisfied my legal leanings), the drama and slow-burning relationships among the characters, and the political sub-plots. It’s the only show I go out of my way to watch while I’m on holiday — most memorably, I watched the emotional rollercoaster of season four’s penultimate episode on my iPad in an infinity pool in Costa Rica last year. But I digress.

For me, the relationship between Will and Alicia has always been central to the show. Not just the romantic and passionate aspects, but their friendship and their history too. It has always felt like this relationship was end-game, so I didn’t mind too much that we didn’t get to see many scenes of them happy together in season three (although this season, while the two have been at odds, we’ve been able to enjoy a few more in the form of wistful flashbacks to happier times). There would be further exploration in the future, I assumed, even if things didn’t end the way I hoped for.

At the start of this season, Alicia and Cary left Lockhart Gardner to start their own firm, taking some of their clients with them and leaving Will with a huge sense of personal and professional betrayal that has been at the core of all of this season’s key plots. At the time, the writers explained that it was a way of keeping Alicia and Will’s relationship interesting, but now we all know that the real impetus was that a year ago, Josh Charles, who plays Will, decided to leave the show. Julianna Margulies, who plays Alicia and who is also a producer on the show, did manage to talk him into staying on for 15 more episodes to give Will a good send-off. But now this season doesn’t just look like the exploration of new depths of the relationship between Alicia and Will, so much as Will Gardner’s swan song.

I was suspicious when there was no resolution to episode seven's case-of-the-week. It was a typical ‘Will’ case, where he truly believed in the innocence of his timid, young client, Jeffrey Grant, and, firing moral outrage from all cannons, was willing to do anything to get the murder case against Grant dismissed. Eight episodes and several months later, the case has come to trial and Will is doing his damnedest to refute the damning DNA evidence against Grant. But in his desperation to win and to clear his client, he misses the warning signs that Grant really, really doesn’t want to go into solitary confinement, even though he is being assaulted in general population. Just like the court guard misses the fact that his gun is within easy reach of an increasingly panicked Grant.

Cut to Diane in the next courtroom and what sounds like gunshots. Or was it a false alarm — the judge's gavel? No, it was gunfire. A distraught Kalinda (someone give Archie Panjabi another Emmy) and Diane make their way to the hospital and discover that Will was DOA. Kalinda tries to call Alicia, but she’s stuck at a particularly cringe-worthy correspondents’ lunch and isn’t answering her phone. Kalinda eventually gets through to Eli and when she explains why she’s calling, Eli knows Alicia has to take the call. We have to wait until next week for her reaction to the news. The scene mirrors the season one finale, where Will tries to call Alicia just as she is about to join Peter on stage at the launch of his re-election campaign. Eli sends the calls to voicemail, deleting one of Will’s two messages — the one where he says he loves her and wants to give their relationship a shot — a sub-plot that occupies much of season two.

I knew the death was probably coming when I read the first line of the note to the fans posted on the Facebook page by writers, but "the loss of Will Gardner" was somewhat ambiguous to my optimistic mind and throughout the episode, I kept hoping that he wasn't going to die. I certainly didn't think the death would happen that way. When explaining their motivation for the death, the Kings noted that deaths are often sudden and unexpected, and you don't always get the chance to put your affairs in order or say your goodbyes. That's fair enough and Will's death will impact all of the main characters in plenty of interesting ways. It doesn't mean I have to like it. 

Will's character is central to the show and his relationships with Kalinda and Diane are just as important as his connection with Alicia, and although I will continue to watch the show, I feel like its best years — or, at least, my favourite years — will be behind me. (Incidentally, season five has been one of the best.) Even if it turned out that Will and Alicia weren't each other’s true loves, it would have been nice to get some resolution either way, after investing nearly five seasons in their relationship. Given the show's history with missed calls and voicemails, I am hopeful that Alicia might discover a message from beyond the grave, but otherwise, we might never know. But I do at least know to take off my eye make-up before the inevitable grief-fest of next week's episode.

A Good Wife Doesn't Make a Good Husband

The Good Wife, in case I haven't mentioned it often enough lately, is one of my favourite TV shows (OK, one of my favourites out of the four or so that I watch), some weeks I even prefer it to Mad Men and like Mad Men, TGW is a real slow-burner. In fact, it feels even slower because its seasons are twice as long and still the main, overarching plots taken forever to develop (or, just as often, not develop).

Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies, whose performance in the latest episode may well put her on track for another Emmy) has spent 1 9/10 seasons being the eponymous good wife, standing by her husband Peter, the former State's Attorney for Cook's County, when he admitted to sleeping with a prostitute on 18 occasions and served half a season of jail time for alleged abuses of his position. After more than a decade as a stay-at-home mom, Alicia got a job as a junior associate at the firm of her old friend/could-have-been romantic interest Will, and does all that she can to protect her children from the ensuing chaos, and to keep calm and carry on lawyering. She supported Peter in his campaign for re-election after he was released from prison and cleared of the charges against him -- grudgingly, sometimes, but still. She pushed aside the torch she may carry for Will. And on the night before Peter's election, she finally agreed to do a TV interview and told the world (well, Chicago, at least, because, let's face it, presidential election this ain't) that she forgave Peter.

And then it all goes horribly wrong. It turns out that as well as the prostitute, Peter slept with an employee of his at the state's attorney's office in exchange for helping her change her name and her identity. The woman now works as the investigator for Alicia's law firm -- the awesome but evasive Kalinda -- and has become Alicia's best friend. The ever-tactless investigator for the incumbent State's Attorney's office lets this cat out of the bag just seconds after Alicia finds out that Peter has won the election, and this is where the previous episode ended.

This week's episode opens in the same place and then we see Alicia in her apartment, pacing around with structure and purpose. She packs all of Peter's things into boxes and, having made an appointment with a realtor and signed the lease on a new apartment (even though it's late at night), she arranges to have his stuff taken to the new pad. Then she tells him to meet her there. He thinks the place is for the family at first but no, he soon finds out that this is his place, she's leaving him and he's no longer welcome at home. She found out about him and Kalinda, she says perfectly calmly, and although she doesn't want to talk about it, she won't change her mind. Then she goes home and finally she breaks down. But not for long. She plays some loud music from her son's iPod, puts on some make-up and starts to prepare for a court case she has to argue the following day (or, a few hours later, given that it's pretty much morning). She doesn't tell Will or Kalinda about her news (although both of them must have guessed something was up from her professional but brusque tone). She just goes and kicks ass on behalf of her client.

Peter's mother Jackie tries to persuade her to change her mind (Alicia is "just being selfish") and his campaign manager Eli just wants to understand what's going on and whether it is permanent. When she tells the children their father has moved out, she breaks down again and the kids are shocked to see their calm, cool mother in such a way. Also, if anyone asks them what's going on with their parents, they have to lie, she tells them, because although the family shouldn't lie to one another, it's sometimes OK not to tell the whole truth to people who want to hurt them. Through her tears, she tries to reassure them that everything is going to be OK.

Peter tries again to reason with Alicia. He'll see a marriage counsellor, he'll resign from his newly won state's attorney position, he'll do anything she asks. But she doesn't even want to talk about it. It's amazing how quickly Peter changes from a heart-broken, begging tone to someone much crueller. "You're sleeping with Will," he says, "that's what this is about." Alicia doesn't justify this with a response but she takes her gloves off too; when Peter tells her Kalinda is blameless, she asks, "Why, did you rape her?" Exit Peter. As he leaves, Alicia makes a final, heartfelt plea: "Say something to make me fall in love with you again." But all he says is goodbye. Then we see him in his campaign office, very Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, telling callers he's not the same Peter Florrick any more. And when Cary, Alicia's former rival at her law firm (who was fired and went to work for the incumbent State's Attorney), comes in to find out whether his job is safe, Peter is highly ambivalent until he discovers, with devilish glee, that Cary is a nemesis of The Good Wife. You can practically hear him say, "mwahahaha," and it isn't pretty.

For The Good Wife, this is quite a lot of action for one episode (there was also Alicia's case involving a former rock chick being denied a vital organ transplant going on, of course) but so little resolution. Will Alicia ever discuss what has happened with Peter? Will she let him see how much he has hurt her? I'm hoping that in her conversations with Will and Kalinda about this will be more informative (come on, Alicia, it's OK to let people see your feelings sometimes!). Knowing this show, though, the implications of Alicia's separations for her relationship with Will might be dealt with somewhere around season five -- which is fine, although not good for people who like resolution.

Boredwalk Empire

When I first heard about Boardwalk Empire, I thought it sounded interesting but I wasn't sure I was ready to add another TV show to my restricted repertoire. I was loyal to Mad Men and the fact that Boardwalk Empire started to steal some of its awards this year didn't endear me to it. Equally, although I now have access to Sky via Skyplayer, I wasn't sure I could watch a channel (Sky Atlantic) that pirated MM from Auntie.

Inevitably, curiosity kicked in and I watched the first episode at the weekend. The viewing conditions were not ideal; I should have just downloaded the episode from Skyplayer because although I have a very fast broadband connection, I suspect that Saturday is a common time for people to catch up on their week's Sky viewing. The trouble with streaming on Skyplayer is that a) you have to put up with a lot of buffering (on Saturday nights, anyway) and b) if your internet connection cuts out, even temporarily, you have to start again from scratch (and repeat the buffering process). Also, I prefer my TV shows to last 42 minutes or so and this pilot was way longer.

Overall, then, my rating of Boardwalk Empire wasn't great. I just didn't get into it and I found it a little hard to keep track of who was who (this was possibly due to the aforementioned internet issues that meant I may have missed some parts and watched others twice). Sure, it looked great and Steve Buscemi and Kelly MacDonald are always good value (as for Michael Pitt, I've never trusted him since he played wet Henry in Dawson's Creek, creepy Justin in Murder by Numbers and wet Matthew in The Dreamers) but I wasn't left craving the second episode. I haven't given up on it yet and I'm definitely willing to try to shed my confirmation bias so I will be watching the next part, at least, but it's in no danger of displacing Mad Men from its pedestal.

Putting the Art in Saatchi

When I first heard about the BBC TV programme The School of Saatchi, I assumed it was a sort of Apprentice meets Mad Men. My first job (all right, fin de millénium work experience) was at Saatchi & Saatchi's swank Charlotte Street offices, although having just checked out the modern-day Cassandra that is Wikipedia, it seems that neither Saatchi has been involved with the once-eponymous Saatchi & Saatchi since 1995.

Actually, SoS is about art. Innit. Like The Apprentice, there are some candidates who have chosen from among thousands of applicants for their ability to look good and/or be annoying/funny on camera artistic potential. Each week, the six chosen artists work on a different project--this week it was creating some public art for various locations in happenin' Hastings; this week, it was bringing Sudeley Castle into the 21st century with some, er, interesting contemporary pieces.

The best bit is that although ultimately, Charles Saatchi gets to decide which artist will "win" and get to exhibit their work in the Hermitage and have their own studio for three years, renowned curator--I mean, notoriously camera-shy--Charles Saatchi doesn't actually appear on the show or meet the candidates. Instead, he conveys his opinions through one of his gallery team (I can't help but think of Jane Goodall).

As the candidates/artists don't have to live together, it's not quite as intense as The Apprentice--indeed, they even had their mums and boyfriends to come to help them set up their installations this week--and personalities aren't quite as intense as on The Apprentice.

There is, however, one guy who is a little bit of a drama queen, threatening to throw a tantrum every time one of the others might ruin the impact of his leaning towers of chapatis. Then there's the terribly kooky, gamine one--the panel and Charles can't decide whether they love her or hate her but Tracey Emin thinks she's great if that holds any currency. Also, two of the other guys look very similar to each other--OK, so they just have big, messy, curly, dark hair but even so, it's hard to tell them apart when they are both quiet and mumble a lot (last week, the cuter one was wearing a hat, which made life easier). The two others are a lot saner and I liked their work the best (in the sense that, I am a magpie and I like pretty, shiny things).

Another similarity to The Apprentice is the way the editing makes it sound like the artists are constantly uttering pretentious crap. After the kooky one's installation (a tasselled curtain tie thing attached to a rotating wire) broke and failed to rotate, she said: "I've decided that I've always liked the potential in movement but not the actual movement" [emphasis mine]. Later, on hearing philistine members of the public who have just seen her art criticise it: "I just don't want anyone to speak when they look at the work."

On The Apprentice, the candidates excel in failing to answer the questions "why should I hire you?" and "why shouldn't I fire you?" They can talk for minutes at a time while attempting to address the question and still manage to completely miss the point. On SoS, the equivalent question is, "why is this art?" Again, none of them really comes up with a decent answer and almost all of them seem surprised to be asked this question during the "mini-interview" stage of the application process. "You mean you can't tell?" you can hear them think. "But art isn't quantifiable or even describable!"

The real difference between the two programmes, though, is that on The Apprentice, when the candidates mess up, you can tell and you can laugh at them and their foolish mistakes and watch them get slated (and, sometimes, fired) in the boardroom. On SoS when the artists screw up (chapatis going mouldy, funny rotating tie rail thing breaking, mirrors not slotting into shelves, etc.), I really can't tell when looking at the finished product, especially when they just justify how they meant it to be like that all along.

But what would I know? The only art I like is art with history attached--portraits from the fifteenth and sixteenth century, mainly--and even then it's mainly for the stories rather than for the aesthetic pleasure.

Cruel Intentions: The Oxbridge Years

I've always enjoyed quirky juxtapositions and this was cemented in place by the Italian literature course, Visions of Hell, which I took in my second year of university, Dante's Divine Comedy being a classic melting pot of high and low style, with popes and priests being punished alongside pimps and prostitutes. This means that I've never really been too ashamed of watching trashy shows such as Gossip Girl, as long as they are interspersed with the occasional deeper, more meaningful diversion. Besides, Gossip Girl is actually quite well written with a very sharp and funny script and the odd bit of decent acting; it can't be so bad if the Daily Intel blog tags it the Greatest Show of Our Time.

Compared to the programme I just watched, Gossip Girl looks like the televisual equivalent of In Search of Lost Time or War and Peace or similar. Trinity has been pretty heavily advertised, of late; at least, at the cinema, which is the source of nearly all the adverts I've seen. It's a ridiculously camp new "drama" set in a "fictional" college at the prestigious BridgeFord University (wot, not CamOx University?) with a whole load of cardboard cut-out, clichéd characters. Oh, and there is also something sinister going on, with frequent references to the fact that the college is thoroughly rotten--right to the top. Especially at the top. Dun dun duh!

Not being an expert in the New York prep school scene, I've never really felt in a position to do my own reality index of Gossip Girl (and why would I want to when the Daily Intel's is so good?) but I did attend a large, rich Oxbridge college, not dissimilar in some ways to this Trinity, so I thought I would tally up just how unrealistic the show is.

I should also add that I thought the show was pretty dire: the acting was shoddy and the script was laughable--and not in a good way. I'm sure some parts are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and that the target audience is probably not people who have been to colleges like Trinity, but even so, I wasn't hugely impressed with episode one, realistic or not. A quick summary of the characters is on the ITV website; the bios are pretty short as the characters are all so two-dimensional.

Realer Than Lord Snooty's Obvious Crush on Sebastian Valmont in Cruel Intentions

* Earnest Christian has a tea and biscuits party in her room, shortly after hanging her crucifix on the wall. University was the first time I really met hard-core Christians en masse and there were such tea parties (though plenty of other people arranged them too, of course). [Plus 10]

* Earnest Christian and Lewisham Lad talk about which questions they answered in their A-level exams. [Plus 2]

* In her first anatomy tutorial, Earnest Christian reveals that she has been reading up on her tutor's research--there is always (at least) one... [Plus 5]

* Lord Snooty (AKA Dorian) expects his bedder (person who does light cleaning of students' rooms in Cambridge; known as a "scout" at Oxford) to service more than his room; he also impregnated his former Swedish bedder who left to get an abortion. Tales of male students getting involved with their bedder reached my ears more than once while I was at university, so this may actually be fairly realistic. [Plus 1]

* The Dandelions Club is an all-male society for the richest, most important men in the college. Their antics, including wild parties with champagne and nudity and the recruitment of two would-be-cool-dudes to be their "jesters" (i.e. slaves) for the year, may seem OTT but perhaps no more so than many other elite college drinking societies. One such society admits only the richest ten men in the college; others, like this one, are less about elitism and more about debauchery. [Plus 2]

* The hazing, which involved the jesters being pissed on in turn by various Dandelions and which will, doubtless, escalate throughout the series, doesn't sound dissimilar to the events organised by various university sports clubs. [Plus 2]

* Also, when Lord Snooty tells Lewisham Lad how awesome the Dandelions Club is and LL asks how he can join, Lord Snooty replies, "You can't because your...parents are poor" (except, the pause is long enough to convince the audience that he is going to say, "because you're black"). His snobbery is caricatured and although I never met people who said things like that, I did know some who thought it. [Plus 1]

* Plus points too for Rosalind, Lord Snooty's kissing cousin, who slinks around college in a leather miniskirt and is furious when Lewisham Lad fails to be impressed be the fact that she is 45th in line to the throne. She does get her wicked way in the end, though, by asking whether he's ever come on anyone in the royal family before--perhaps one of the most ridiculous lines in the whole episode. However, she also tells Lewisham Lad that her father owns Lewisham--not as impressive as the guy I knew whose parents own Wiltshire but [plus 5] nonetheless.

* Valley Girl, the socially inept if well-meaning Welsh lass who never knows what to say, do or wear in any given Trinity situation, reminds me of a number of people I knew. [Plus 2]

* Before the matriculation lunch starts in hall, the porter beats a ginormous gong. Although the gong was a little smaller at my college, it still made a very loud bang and caused me to spill my wine over the don sitting me at my first dinner in hall. [Plus 1]

* Lewisham Lad embarrasses himself at the matriculation lunch because he didn't learn the college's grace and it is, apparently, a college tradition for random people throughout the room to recite one line at a time, and he didn't learn it, leading to everyone laughing at him (what larks!). My college doesn't have such a tradition but the grace is in two parts and n00bs often make the mistake of sitting down and/or talking loudly at the end of the first part, leading to much laughter among the students and glaring among the fellows. I got around the problem of not knowing which knives and forks to use by avoiding my food in favour of the free-flowing wine. [Plus 1]

Total: 30

Faker than the Warden Allowing DebaucheryFest (AKA the Feast of Fools) Provided that the Jesters "Volunteered" to Be Hazed All Year

* I'm sorry but even the Dandelions wouldn't have served Champagne to the "peasants" at their party. Given that the average student ent exclusively serves a weak vodka and fruit juice "cocktail," the Dandelions could have settled for a few bottles of Sainsbury's second cheapest wine to keep the masses happy. [Minus 5]

* Also, what's with the tickets for the Dandelions' Feast of Fools? Haven't they heard about Facebook invites? [Minus 10]

* Drinking societies often do adorn themselves with various stash to show their in-group membership but the Dandelions wouldn't wear their blazers and ties all the time (apart from Lord Snooty, who spent half of the episode flashing his arse to the cameras as he strolled naked around his rooms, getting it on first with his cousin and then with Earnest Christian). [Minus 2]

* Yes, all of the rooms I had in college were pretty large by student standards and the second and third year rooms were also pretty nicely done up but the corridors were always as stark as a hospital--no fancy artwork or Louis XVI furniture. [Minus 2]

* It's unlikely that the lowly freshers would be housed on the same staircase as Lord Snooty (who seems to be able to make up his own rules)--second and third years always get nicer rooms than freshers, who usually get stuck with whatever's left over (or shoved into the award-winning concrete wasteland that was the first-year accommodation in my college). Unless, of course, Earnest Christian was intentionally placed next to Lord Snooty by the Powers That Be... [Minus 5]

* The hoods worn by the Trinity fellows weren't accurate if they were supposed to be Cambridge hoods. The new (lady) warden did her PhD at Trinity and so should be wearing a red hood rather than the royal blue MPhil hood she was seen in. (OK, they could have taken the hood colours from Oxford instead, or made them up.) [Minus 1]

Total: 25

So, shockingly, Trinity ended up with five points on the real side, although to be fair, I spent the first 20 minutes staring at the screen, paralysed by the comically jaw-dropping awfulness I was watching and so I don't remember much from that half of the episode. The scene between Lord Snooty and his cousin Rosalind was the worst ever copy of the scene between Kathryn Merteuil and Sebastian Valmont in Cruel Intentions--the one where Kathryn is happy to rub up against her step-brother for a little while but then leaves him in the lurch (though Sebastian expresses his annoyance at this a little less crudely than Lord Snooty). Similarly, Lord Snooty's "seduction" of Earnest Christian was pathetically reminiscent of Sebastian and Annette in Cruel Intentions (itself, of course, hugely derivative of the film Dangerous Liaisons (not to mention de Laclos's epistolary novel...)), although Sebastian would never have accepted the challenge of seducing a girl who was willing to dump Jesus for him and jump into bed after a 30-second embrace in which he consoled her over the death of her father. The title of this post is also unfair because trashy as Cruel Intentions is, it's a lot classier than Trinity.

I think I'm going to go and read some Pynchon now to clear my head...

The Year of Our Lord 1536

Yorkshire (Northern England). The year of Our Lord, 1536. It was pretty grim up north in 1536. Corruption was rife among the very people who were supposed to instill order and discipline and--worse--certain poxy southern upstarts (mentioning no names, Thomas Cromwell) have got way too big for their boots and started foisting their heathen, Protestant beliefs upon the king and forcing him to close down the monasteries, plundering their wealth. He even wanted to ban holy days! What a cad! 

No, it's not a prequel to the David Peace Red Riding quartet; it's the first episode of the new season of The Tudors and the producers have realised that having invested the entire first two seasons in the dramatic rise and spectacular fall of Anne Boleyn, and Henry tended to move through his wives more quickly after number two, they are going to need to find some additional plot points this season. As there hasn't been much history so far, they decided to go all out and introduce the Pilgrimage of Grace--a 1536 uprising in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire with many disgruntled northerners protesting against the dissolution of the monasteries. Incidentally, although every scene depicting Naughty Northern Rebels is prefixed with the subtitle, "Yorkshire--Northern England," you don't really need to be told because the sun never shines, the people look depressed and the buildings look decrepit. The same happened in The O.C. whenever any of the characters left the glorious sunshine of the "perfect" Newport Beach to go visit some hellhole like Chino, the sun always disappeared and no one ever smiled.

Not only have C.J. Sansome's Shardlake books been very popular recently, but April 2009 also marks the 500th anniversary of Henry's accession and so it's naturally the perfect time to start the new season (it also means there are plenty of Tudor-themed events in London, including the Man and Monarch exhibition at the British Library).

Anyway, after the charisma and freaky blue eyes of Anne Boleyn (they could at least have made the actress wear contacts; everyone knows Anne was famous for her dark, "witchy" Boleyn eyes), Jane Seymour (played by a girl my age who is also from Oxford--grrr) is a little bland, although this episode, which probably covers about half of her reign as queen, does show Henry's initial frustrations of son-lack even towards his Jane. Henry was always as fickle to his favourite advisors as he was to his wives and women, in The Tudors, at least, with the rise and fall of Wolesey occupying much of season one and poor Thomas More's decline from favour in season two while Cromwell just rose and rose. In the new series, Cromwell goes from being knighted and made Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal one minute (having told Henry he's dumped one billion (or even several million) pounds into the crown's coffers following the ransacking of an assortment of monasteries) to being bitch slapped and told he was an idiot by the king about four minutes later after Henry found out there was something rotten in the state of Yorkshire.

And of course, Charles Brandon, Duke of Phwoar is still around, happily married to his second wife. He is, however, sent to Coventry--well, to Lincoln--to go and put down the rebels/pilgrims. It seems like a futile effort--the north of England remained a problem for monarchs throughout the sixteenth century; it was just too far away from London and the court for the monarch to have any proper control, especially when the local gentry and nobles themselves rebelled as in the Rising of the Northern Earls of 1569. Such troublemakers. I hope they don't kill off Charles, though, as he's the main talent on the show (Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's intrusive Irish accent is totally off-putting). 

There is also Max Brown (AKA Danny from Grange Hill) who plays Edward Seymour, brother of Jane and also of Thomas who later marries Henry's sixth wife before frolicking around with a young and impressionable Princess Elizabeth in a most unfitting manner. Seymour eventually becomes the self-styled Duke of Somerset (hence Somerset House) and ran England as the regent/dictator of Edward VI until he was ousted (and executed) for being too powerful and replaced by the (self-styled) Duke of Northumberland who I like less as a dictator but who is at least father to Robert Dudley, who looks like Joseph Fiennes and so can be forgiven a lot.

It must be tricky to make a historical TV series--more so than in a film--because you can't always tell which actors and characters will be the most successful or the most popular in advance and it's always unfortunate if an old favourite gets the chop (often quite literally). Wildly inaccurate though The Tudors may be, it does at least pretend to stick to the truth occasionally and certainly wouldn't stoop to changing the ending of season two (i.e. not executing Anne Boleyn) just because the producers had invested so much time and energy into building her up and striking her down. I wonder whether they will stop when they reach the end of Henry's reign (this season, even though he still has three and a half wives to get through) or whether they will carry on to Edward and his pimps, LJG, Bloody Mary and Good Queen Bess.

It's also amusing watching The Tudors in conjunction with David Starkey's Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, which also started on Monday (oh, and did you know his latest Henry-fest came out in paperback a couple of weeks ago too?). The acting's probably better in Starkey's show--certainly, there are fewer North American northerners and Irish kings of England. Also, Starkey's lust for Henry is even greater than that of any would-be queen consort and her posse...

Heads Did Roll

I feel a bit like Irwin in The History Boys (in the play, anyway) but if you want to learn about (Sir) Alan Sugar, study Henry VIII, except Siralan is a pussycat compared to Good King Hal, and yet The Apprentice isn't a million miles apart from the back-stabbing, double-crossing court of Henry VIII either.

• The Apprentice candidates must lower themselves by referring to the boss as "Siralan." Subjects must refer to Henry as Yuhmajesty (Yurmajesty in the case of the American actors who can't quite manage the non-rhotic accent) - although hot young things are occasionally excused from this, until it's pretty much too late to save themselves and they resort to begging.
• Siralan has his favourites that are beyond comprehension to any objective party. Hal has his favourites that are beyond comprehension to any objective party (yeah, so, Anne was hot but marrying her?).
• Candidates will quite happily drop one another in the firing line in order to move up in Siralan's appreciate and (more often) to save their own neck. Henry's subjects will quite happily betray one another to win his favour, to promote their family's interests and to (literally) save their own neck.
• Siralan has to keep on firing candidates because he has only ten (?) episodes in the series and needs to end up with one winner. Henry has to keep on executing people because if he trusts anyone for too long, they're bound to betray him eventually. No one seems to realise that while being in his favour is wonderful, the flipside of the manic depressive coin is that you might end up one head shorter. Ah, Anne, Cromwell, More...you all thought you would be different... How naive.
• There are some real idiots on The Apprentice (especially those with Ancient Greek and double-barrelled surnames) and some very unlucky people (salt of the earth army chaps and those for whom "the spoken language is their tool" maybe). There are some real idiots in the Tudor court (Mark Smeaton, bless him, although in the TV show, he's more of a fabulous queen than an unsubtle, careless idiot) and some who just picked the wrong side at the wrong time (Thomas More).

Still, the characters in Henry's court are far more interesting than pretty much everyone on The Apprentice, although in this week's episode, heads really did roll in The Tudors: Smeaton, George Boleyn, Brereton and Sir Henry Norris all confess to sleeping with Queen A. After a good racking, anyway. Brereton is working for the Emperor and the Pope and confessed willingly as his death would contribute to the downfall of "the whore." Poor old Smeaton only screwed Anne's brother (although Henry generously allowed him to be beheaded rather than the hanging, drawing and quartering a commoner would normally have been dealt). George B himself probably wouldn't have been executed had a) his lovely, jealous wife not dropped him in it with Henry in the first place and failed to defend him and b) he hadn't emasculated Henners during the trial, saying he was a bad lover. Handsome poet Thomas Wyatt (senior) was saved, ironically, given that after Inquisitioner in Chief Thomas Cromwell that he was the only one who was guilty of sleeping with the queen (pre-Henry). His son, of course, goes on to be executed for plotting to overthrow Mary and to put Anne's daughter on the throne instead.

For all the beheadings in this episode, though, it was a bit of a letdown as Anne is still standing (season finale next week must be suitably dramatic, of course). Henry was devastated to "find out" about all of her "lovers" and sobs into Charles, Duke of Hotness's lap, cursing her, and pretending that he really believes Cromwell's fabricated charges and that Anne hurt and betrayed him.

Just like The Apprentice, though, replenishing its supply of candidates once a year, once Henry has killed off all of one family or one generation at court, the time will come for another to shine. As the Boleyn's star falls, so that of the Seymours begins to shine (and Seymour Junior 1 and 2 end up wreaking havoc long into Mary's reign), and just as Cromwell shot to brilliance allowing him to push Anne out of the way, so too his own decisions as to suitable brides for Henry end him up in the Tower. No one is safe, no matter how good a friend, and being Siralan's favourite will only get you so far if you keep on making mistakes and, worse, make the wrong decisions at the wrong time. Still, Siralan could really learn from a biography of Henry VIII (I'm not suggesting he could learn from Jonathan Rhys-Meyers - the most Irish Henry ever).

Take a Chancer on Me

I had to rewatch some of the episodes of Chancer last night to relive those great moments of Clive in my village (even if for the purposes of TV, it was pretending to be Buckinghamshire). Exciting as it was to see him being chucked out of a car by some bird outside a nearby pub and for him then to hitch a lift into the village itself, walk past my old school (!) and make a call from a phone box that never existed, I think the series has lost something in the passing of time.

The first series was aired in 1990 and it really has a very dated, late '80s/early '90s feel about it.
I can't really remember the plot but Clive plays Stephen Crane/Derek/Chancer who is basically a bit of a one who gets involved with two birds, one of whom is the daughter of the owner of a posh, Warwickshire car manufacturer with whom Clive wants to go into business. He rips people off a lot and is quite cheeky with his sage advice in the form of, "Crane's law number one," which varies ("live fast, die young" or "it's not what you do, it's who knows you are doing it"). Also, time has done Mr Owen very well - he looks way better in Closer, Children of Men and The Golden Age (not to mention in person) than in Chancer, though that bizarrely sexy hint of a Coventry accent and cheeky glint in the eyes was there even way back when.

Sigh. I think I'm going to have to order the DVD boxset...

HIGNFY Once More

I'm beginning to think I am going to have to strike "N/A" from the TV shows section of my Facebook profile. It's all iPlayer's fault, though; I went to see if the new episode of Mad Men was available online yet and while it wasn't (I was an hour too early), I did spot that a new series of Have I Got News for You had started and so of course, I had to watch episode one.

I used to watch HIGNFY every week - after Dawson's Creek finished, it was the only show I watched every week but because The Ex was a big fan too, there was always someone to remind me to watch it each week. I watched the series in autumn 2006 as my housemates all watched the show then, but since then, I've only seen about one episode, as I've either been out on a Friday night or have been at home but have forgotten about HIGNFY.

I first got into HIGNFY well over ten years ago and watched it religiously throughout my teenage years. I'm sure that I am so cynical and/or apathetic towards politics purely because the vast majority of the input into my political education was the sharp, sardonic banter of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton (I had a huge crush on the latter, many years ago, which bizarrely only ended after I discovered he wasn't gay...). The chemistry between the two of them has always been great but it was best of all when Angus Deayton still hosted the programme, rather than this prolonged period of interregnum, with one guest host after another. They're all OK - I quite like Jack Dee (this week's guest host) and his deadpan humour, for example, but it's just not the same without Angus. He was the one who held it all together and contributed so much to the show's success and while Paul's wit is still strikingly and brilliantly fast and while Ian's biting cynicism is still great, without Angus there, it all just feels rather empty. He was the face of HIGNFY - the figurehead - and while the guest hosts range from pretty good (Jack Dee, Alexander Armstrong) to the dire (Charlotte Church), HIGNFY is just another thing that will never be the same in the absence of its leader.

Still, having not seen the programme for months, I did laugh - out loud, even - quite vigorously and often. It's great to see such a quality, well-respected publication as Onion World getting some attention, even if not everyone is quite so appreciative of the missing words round as I am.

My real problem with TV, of course, is not the shows themselves but having to watch them on the terms of the networks rather than on my own. Even in my O.C. and Dawson's Creek days, I tended the watch the programmes on DVD most of the time so that I could choose when to watch each episode. iPlayer is perfect, meanwhile, as it means that amnesiac old moi doesn't have to miss out on a show she loves just because she (occasionally) has better plans for a Friday night. As I dig deeper into the annals of iPlayer, I can see that it could be dangerous - I have now spotted Waking the Dead, another show I used to like, not least because I used to really fancy Trevor Eve, for some reason. It's really no wonder that 70% (?) of the UK's internet usage is from people watching programmes on iPlayer (so The Ex says, anyway).

Who needs a TV, eh? Gossip Girl, The Tudors, Mad Men, HIGNFY, Waking the Dead... Jeez, sounds like I'm well on the way towards addiction already.

The Mad World of Ads and Cads

As part of an experiment designed to teach me (or, at least, remind me) what it feels like to actually watch a TV show, week in, week out, I've started watching Mad Men vaguely in synch with the actual broadcast schedule on the BBC. I think we do have the BBC 3 (3 viewers, that is) or whichever channel it is on but on Sunday nights I'm usually sheltering in my room for warmth rather than risk the frosty living room, so I've been watching via iPlayer, which is actually fairly adequate, not least because I can choose when I want to watch the show rather than being constrained to Sundays-at-ten.

I picked Mad Men as my first almost foray into TV-watching because my dad, the adman, recommended it. The show follows the loves, lives and lies of a group of men at a Madison Avenue ad agency in the early 1960s. Apparently not much changed in ten years because according to my dad, the agency depicted is just like the London company that became his first employer; indeed, his first boss was interviewed on Radio 4 to provide an insider's insight as to whether the show was at all realistic. Although my dad has moved from advertising to brand strategy he does look back wistfully on those early days as a junior account planner.

The protagonist of Mad Men is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who thinks he is (and is seen to be) Don Juan. He's proclaimed as a creative genius and is handsome, charming and confident. He knows exactly what to say to whom, especially if it means he will win the pitch. It's somewhat telling that first time he is shown cavorting (sorry; "brain-storming ideas for a pitch") with a woman, it is with Female Stereotype #1, AKA Midge (Rosemarie Dewitt). She is an independent, sexy, brash illustrator living on her lonesome in a sweet little apartment. Oh, and she saves Don's bacon early on so she must be Real Smart.

As the first episode rolls out, we are introduced to a range of other cardboard cut-out characters. Take Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), the Sweet and Naive New Secretary who, following advice from her office manager, goes on the pill within about a day of starting work. She wears ugly clothes and has hideous hair and is clearly desperate to receive approval and validation from the men at work, including Don, who is her boss, although she's not really his type so he doesn't pay much attention.

Then there's Joan (Christina Hendricks), the Feisty, Knowing Office Manager (and yes, she does have red hair, just in case the feistiness doesn't come across well enough). She gets off on bullying Peggy (in an elder sisterly way) and showing off how much more savvy she is than her latest minion. Oh, and of course, she likes pushing the junior executives around too, although isn't brave enough to dare try anything on Don.

Finally, Don's wife (yes!) Betty (January Jones) appears on the scene. Betty, playing the role of Perfect Blonde Wife, is somewhat reminiscent of the character of Naomi Watts's Betty in Mulholland Drive--they have the name, the blonde bob, the beaming smile that is obviously masking something darker and the utter deference to the role of PBW. Both MM and MD clearly got their inspiration from the comic book, although neither bothered with a Veronica. This Betty seems to have it all: the perfect handsome husband, the perfect cute kids, the perfect suburban home and yet somehow, she is not a happy bunny. She tries to brush away these doubts but her anxiety leaves her with hands that shake so badly and so uncontrollably that she ends up crashing the car (which reminds me of this great Harry Enfield sketch) and after the doctors fail to find anything wrong with her, she ends up going to therapy. How terribly modern. What's more shocking is that somehow, January Jones manages to look much older than 27; I think it's those frumpy housewife dresses she has to wear.

There are plenty more female stereotypes to come, though. Lest we think that all women in this universe are silly secretaries, wussy wives or freak-of-nature "lone women," enter Bright, Sexy Businesswoman, Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), AKA The Client (obviously, she couldn't be in charge of something serious like cigarettes or cereal, so she is the daughter of the owner of a Fifth Avenue department store that sounds a lot like Henri Bendel). Big error occurs early on when the Ad Lads get in a guy from the Jewish deli to show the client they're in touch with their Hebrew sides, only for one of the Lads to assume that this new guy is in fact Mr Menken, when, of course, the Menken in the room is a Ms (or, at least, a Miss, if Ms hadn't been invented then; when was the sexual revolution again?). Obviously, there is some serious sexual tension between The Client and Don Juan, which we know can't end well. For now, though, The Client is the most likeable character of the lot of them.

Actually, though, for all of his failings, Don is remarkably likable; how much of this is due to his charisma and silver tongue is another matter, but as a representative of his time and of his industry, he doesn't seem so bad at all. Yes, he's smooth but he comes across as more classy than sleazy, unlike his underlings, all of whom look up to him and who think of him as The Man To Be. Methinks that with a set-up like this, some downfall is inevitable, even if only a temporary one; the question is just when--and how.

In fact, the non-major characters are rather like the ensemble cast of Grease. You have Donny's boys who are full of bravado and one-upmanship and who spend their time showing off to any ladies present; then there are Betty's Pink Ladies who all wear their nice house-coats and are terribly gossipy--they aren't so far away from a less fashionable version of Desperate Housewives. I forgot one final stereotypical female: The Single Mom. You know she's going to be trouble because she turns up to a kiddie party wearing trousers; not only that but she walks around a lot- and not even to go someplace, just because she likes walking! Still, The Single Mom seems to be popular with the men, which only leads the Pink Ladies to bitch more.

Everyone smokes--everywhere--even the heavily pregnant Pink Lady who is both smoking and drinking mint juleps in her third trimester. Nice! Good luck raising that deformed child! Smoking seems to be a recurring theme--and not just because of the sexual chemistry Don Juan evokes. His first big pitch is to a tobacco company, where he has to try to keep the business in the face of all these recent, new-fangled, scientific studies that apparently say that smoking's bad for you; imagine that! The characters all get terribly excited by a deodorant--in an aerosol can! How modern!

In any case, Don et al. are a pretty fun bunch and so long as I remember to keep watching the damn thing, I will almost certainly make it through the end of the series, by which point, I hope that Gossip Girl will be back on the air. There isn't much time left before my interest wanes, although both MM and GG are good NYC mood-setters. Not as much as Serendipity (big time cheese, I know, but who wouldn't fall in love when in NYC? With the city if not with anyone else...), Breakfast at Tiffany's or The Apartment but they'll do.

There Is No Friend Like a Sister

I was pretty sure I would dislike The Other Boleyn Girl, even though it involves the Tudors. I read the Philippa Gregory book on which the film is based years ago and quite enjoyed it, as far as I can remember, but Gregory's flowing, if not always brilliant, prose paints a vivid picture of that troublesome period in history and, indeed, of the other Boleyn girl, namely Anne's older sister Mary (Mary is younger in the film, which allows to her to be married off to any old country gentleman, whereas first-born Anne becomes the true apple of her father's plotting eye).

If I get started on the historical inaccuracies, I'll never stop, but suffice to say that as is standard in Hollywood, the timeline is completely screwed and the importance of actual historical events is raised or clouded depending on the context in which the film places them. Effectively, the plot goes as follows. Thomas Boleyn and his wife Elizabeth have a nice estate in the country and three children, Anne, Mary and George. Thomas did rather well when he married into the Howard family - the Dukes of Norfolk and co. - but is a rather weak, spineless character, governed by his own greed and social-climbing ambition, as well as his scheming brother-in-law, Norfolk.

Norfolk learns that King Henry is getting fed up with Catherine of Aragon's inability to provide a son-and-heir so he arranges for Henry to come out to the Boleyn estate in Kent. Mary has just been married off to William Carey, a nice country gentleman, and because she is The Nice Sister, she is quite happy about this and is looking forward to a nice, quiet life with her loving husband. Boleyn and Norfolk decide that the king needs a mistress and that Anne would be the best person for the job - mainly because their favour with the king will rise and rise. The king does indeed seem rather taken with Anne and they have a little flirtatious banter until tragedy strikes while on the hunt one day - Anne was showing off while chasing a stag and the king followed her into a dangerous ravine and fell off his horse and was badly hurt. Bye bye, Anne. Thinking quickly, Boleyn and Norfolk send Mary to go to tend to Henry's wounds and his wounded ego and he falls for her. Anne is furious but not as furious as her father and uncle who think she ruined Christmas for them all by her stupid hunting antics.

Mary is then summoned to court so she can go and be Henry's mistress; she would rather stay on her farm with her husband and expects the latter to stick up for her and for their marriage, but he is offered a position in the prestigious privy council, which apparently makes up for being cuckolded by the king. Meanwhile, Anne has gone and married Percy, another noble dude, in secret, which is big oh-noes as Percy would have needed the king's permission to marry Anne. Anne couldn't resist, though, not least because Percy was betrothed to another woman, and she tells her brother and sister, in delight. Mary worries, though, about the consequences for Anne and tells daddy and Uncky Norfolk, who are furious and send Anne to France for a few months (in reality, Boleyn and both daughters were in the French court for several years); oh noes! Not France! Anne is extremely angry with her sister for tattling and storms grudgingly off to France.

Before long, Mary's hubby is banished to the country so she is free to be with the king and soon, she gets in a family way. The king is pretty pleased about this but can't see her for several months as she "lies in," locked in a dark chamber with only her ladies. Luckily, when the baby is born it is a boy, much to Norfolk and Boleyn's delight; however, in the meantime, Anne has returned to France and is playing the perfect little teasing, coquette, and Henry loves it. So much so that just as Mary is popping out Henry's bastard, Henry tells Anne he wants to have her; Anne, cunningly, says she won't even consider it unless he promises never to "lie with" Catherine again or to talk to Mary again. Henry is torn but - bewitched - agrees and won't even look at the heart-broken Mary or their child. Uncle and Daddy aren't pleased with Anne until she proves every bit the ambitious Howard as she reveals her own plans for Henry, which far exceed even Norfolk's greatest schemes.

The rest of the film is history: Anne wins Henry, Henry gets bored and/or anxious for son, Henry fancies Jane Seymour, Henry decides to get rid of Anne, Anne is executed. In fact, the title of the film is somewhat of a misnomer because it is just as much about Anne as about Mary. Anne constantly schemes and plots and betrays her sister in her efforts to get what she wants, whereas Mary is meek and mild and a bit wet. She is devastated when Henry dumps her in favour of her sister - she genuinely loved him, she says. However, throughout the film, the one thing that never changes is Henry's trust in Mary - he never could quite trust Anne, whereas if he wanted the truth, he knew he could go to Mary to find out. Of course, she puts herself on the line big time by lying about Anne's betrothal to Percy to save her sister, even though it kills her and even though she knows her lie will allow her sister to marry the king. With a dad like Thomas Boleyn and an uncle like Norfolk, the idea of family loyalty had probably been bashed into her head since she was a child, and yet it was totally misplaced given that her family was more than willing to abandon her to suit their needs. On the bright side, she alone gets a happy ending in this tale of the fatal sisters.

Ultimately, The Other Boleyn Girl is a tale of the importance of family loyalty during a time in which one's position and inheritance were far from secure, as well as the extents to which people would go to protect their family and further its interests. The movie portrays the Boleyns as a slightly odd family whereby the males (Thomas and George) are weak and wussy, whereas the females (Anne and her mother Elizabeth) are the ones with the real power. Oddly, given that having a male heir was of the prime importance in the 16th century, Boleyn seems far more concerned about his daughters' marriages than his son's.

George is eventually forced to marry the horrible, selfish, jealous and scheming Jane Parker who ultimately brings about his downfall. Jane is jealous that he is always off with his sisters and not with her, so of course when she sees Anne (desperate to have a son to stop Henry discarding her) and George clearly about to engage in relations not generally deemed appropriate for a brother and sister, her jealousy prevents her from keeping it to herself. In the film, she tells Norfolk (for whom she is a loyal pawn) and then Henry himself; in reality, her wifely crime was to fail to deny the (fabricated) claims about Anne and George during their trials, which ultimately sent her husband to the Tower. In fact, there definitely wasn't enough evidence for a conviction and had George not implied that Anne's lack of male heir was due to Henry's not being manly enough, he probably wouldn't have been executed. Jane gets her own, though; when another Howard queen is on the throne (Katherine Howard), Jane is one of her ladies in waiting and she ends up giving her cousin some very bad advice that ultimately led to both of them being executed. In Jane's case, she seems to have lost her mind shortly before she lost her head, and was rambling away to herself all the way to the block, convinced she would be pardoned.

Of course, this being history (well, sort of) the ending is always clear and you can never forget it, even when Henry is being his most loving with Mary and most lustful with Anne (the film skips over much of the years before the divorce where Anne and Henry were constant companions, writing daily to each other and reading of the joys of the protestant faith). Nonetheless, the ending was quite sad, given that Mary felt let down by Henry at the last minute and Anne felt let down by Mary and then there's poor old George, whose only crime was to want to save his sister's life (even if his moral centres eventually got the better of him).

Anne isn't played in a very sympathetic light here; even though she clearly was an instrument of her conniving uncle and father, she is clearly shown to have inherited this ruthless ambitious drive and is more than happy to betray her sister to achieve her own goals (which happen to be in line with her family's goals, most of the time). Mary, docile and drippy as she is often shown to be, is at least a nice girl with a good heart, who just wants the simple, country life with a man she loves. So, is that the moral? Be nice and sweet and loyal and don't be too ruthless? Don't be the king's mistress? Don't even think about shagging your brother? Don't trust your uncle if he's the Duke of Norfolk? Don't be a woman in the 16th century if you expect to be able to do what you want and to get what you want? It's unclear... The film was still quite an enjoyable romp, anyway, zillion historical inaccuracies aside.

As with Elizabeth I (II), the costumes were gorgeous - beautiful gowns in rich red, green and blue hues. Anne's bling, gold B on a string of pearls could have been better though; it looked as though it came from Claire's Accessories or somewhere so I guess Tiffany hadn't yet opened its London store in 1530 so only tacky jewellery was available.

The actresses playing the sisters were gorgeous too; Natalie Portman as the cool, dark-haired, scheming Anne and Scarlett Johannson as the pale, blonde, "nice" va-va-voom Mary. Incidentally, some readings of Mary Boleyn actually seem to suggest that she was a dirty little harlot who was shagging both the King of France and the King of England within weeks of each other and that she was the bold, outgoing one, whereas Anne was quieter and more political. Obviously, the press loves the opportunity to point out just how different Portman and Johansson look, even though they're both gorgeous! What are the odds of that? As for the rest, there was plenty of symbolic imagery - the repeated shots of chickens being chopped up for dinner just before that fateful hunting trip, the fires flaring up when trouble is brewing, fluffy, white clouds racing over a clear blue sky when times are a-changin'... Even so, it was still a very pretty film. Good score too, and even the British accents weren't too shoddy.

But that Your Royal Pleasure Must Be Done

I don't watch TV. Not ever. Except when I do (although even then, it is really "watching computer" rather than the phat widescreen TV of which Doktor Landlord is so proud). I am currently watching two series: The Tudors and Gossip Girl. The former is, of course, the "real" story of Henry VIII and why he turned out to be the man he did (or, better, didn't) by focusing on the early years of his reign (i.e. when he fancied the French knickers off Anne Boleyn but she wouldn't put out, hence Le Divorce or "Our Great Matter" as they called it), albeit with an irritating title sequence with Jonathan Rhys Meyers telling us that if we want to understand the story, we have to go back to the start and giving us piercing blue-eyed gazes (in fact, so does all of the cast, including Anne Boleyn who was famous for her dark eyes; relatively, this historical accuracy barely matters). The latter is "your one and only guide to the lives of Manhattan's elite."

They might be separated by 500 years but the two programmes are basically about the same thing: gossip, scandal, bitchiness, betrayal and great dresses among the ruling classes. The skirts are shorter and the hair is straighter in GG but otherwise the shows have a lot in common. Truces are made and broken. Affairs commence and vaporise. Punches are exchanged. Oh, and the alpha male always comes out on top, even (and especially) when he has been outwitted.

The Tudors is of the Elizabeth: The Golden Age with regards to historical accuracy: dates are moved to fit the plot, characters (particularly the seemingly infinite line of Thomas Howards, Dukes of Norfolk, with their very noble blood and their tendency to hover just on the opposing side to the crown in any argument) merge. They also get a lot hotter when played by modern actors. Charles Brandon, one of the king's favourites who was made Duke of Suffolk and who is most famous for being Mary, Queen of Scots' grandfather, was definitely as hot as his actor,Henry Cavill, in my history textbook.

Everyone is hot, in fact; if the show gets as far as wifey number four, I'm sure even the Mare of Cleeves would be hot. I suppose this is the fault of Rome, which sexed up the Roman period big time (not that it really needed much help in that area), and set the example. The Tudors opens in about 1517 (the timing is not exact given that crucial events are often shown in the wrong order; for example, Henry's sister Margaret (a combination of Henry's real sisters Margaret and Mary) is married off to the King of Portugal on the condition that she can marry who she chooses (Brandon) next); in reality, Mary married the ageing King of France, Louis XII, who was long since dead at this point in The Tudors).

Henry is devastated because he has no heir and it's clearly all Catherine's fault because she only gave him a daughter and lots of stillborn children. Except, he only starts panicking about the lack of male heir after he falls for Anne Boleyn, the beautiful, dark fox brought up in the French court and so "well versed in those Frenchwomen's trickeries" (not so much as her sister Mary who became the mistress of the King of France and the King of England, though presumably not at the same time (brings a new meaning to détente, I guess)). Henry wants Anne. Anne (and her aspiring father and grasping uncle (Norfolk)) wants Henry but she knows of his habit to grow bored once he's got what he wants (some things never change). So she tells him no nookie until they are married, at which point, he knows he has to have this divorce and that god demands it; so much so that Henry won't feel pure and at ease until he has it. At least, that's what he tells Catherine, Wolsey, the Pope and the whole damn country. No one really supported the divorce except Anne but of course what everyone else thought mattered very little because Henry always got what he wanted.

I've reached episode five, where Anne finally gives in to Henry's marriage proposals, on New Year's Day, 1527. She sends a ship pendant with a maiden and a diamond on as her message of acceptance; Henry, of course, being the ship and Anne the diamond. The incident is also reported in David Starkey's Six Wives, which I am currently reading; in fact, most of the historical details of The Tudors are taken from this or from Wikipedia, presumably by someone who is numerically dyslexic with regards to dates.

Being TV, though, it's not enough for Henry to work his way through a whole menagerie of mistresses or for Princess Margaret to kill her old husband so she can marry the hottie or for your average 16th century scandal, so they also introduce a gay sub-plot: one of the king's favourites, William Compton, has a thing for the (frankly weird-looking) court musician, Thomas Tallis, who won't kiss him because he doesn't love Compton, although eventually they do, in a dark alley.

More shocking still is how old Sam Neill looks as Cardinal Wolsey; I almost didn't recognise him from his Jurassic Park days, although I suppose even that was 15 years ago. Of course, he's bound to be made a head shorter (how dare they steal Keanu's joke in Speed?) before too long (perhaps even this season, which was actually shown last year) even though in real life he died before he could be executed for treason. His crime? Despite everything he had done for Henry (scheming, sneaky bastard though he was), he came down on the wrong side of Our Great Matter and when push came to shove, Henry picked Anne.

Gossip Girl would have a lot to say about that. She knows all too well the power of factions and politics and choosing sides carefully. She would never be caught on the wrong side of any argument. Few powerful people in the 16th century were so lucky; even Henry's secretary, Richard Pace, who was driven to the point of repeated nervous breakdowns on account of dishing Henry's gossip to Wolsey. And vice-versa. It seems that gossip transcends all ages.

Surely, though, the only thing worse than being talked about...is not being talked about.

Next Guilty Pleasure?

First it was Dawson's Creek, then The O.C. and now, finally, it appears that there is a new TV program to my taste in the form of Gossip Girl. Of course, it premières in the U.S. in just over two hours, which makes it online-only territory for me but then I never could commit to watching a TV show in the same slot every week (I only survived my past habits because of E4 and its frequent repetitions of the same episode throughout the week).

Alessandra Stanley in today's New York Times writes:

It seems preposterous even to type the following sentence: The television version of “Gossip Girl” on CW tonight does not quite live up to the novels.

Some will be relieved, since this series of young-adult novels by Cecily von Ziegesar — about rich Upper East Side teenagers who drink martinis, smoke marijuana, shop and shoplift and cut class to have sex in Park Avenue penthouses — is “Reefer Madness” for parents. It is possibly the scariest tableau of prep school privilege since Robert Chambers requested another round at Dorrian’s Red Hand in 1986.

Effectively, the show could have been named The E.C. (East Coast) or The U.E.S. and indeed is brought to us by the makers of The O.C. (i.e. Josh Schwartz whose neglect of Gossip Girl's Californian predecessor led to fans jumping the shark in Pied Piper-like hoards after season two) and (according to The Ex, who knows I care about these things) apparently has the same music selector as The O.C. who plans to do for pop music what The O.C. did for indie.

I first came across Gossip Girl when the book series was launched about five years ago, again following the lives of the pro-/antagonist, Blair Waldorf (yes, really) and her BFF/biggest rival Serena van der Woodsen (uh huh), which are, by turns, charmed and less than charmed. Sadly, I was far too old to read this when the first book came out, which was a shame because it was as though someone had taken the bollocks pulp fiction I wrote as a teenager and relocated it to Manhattan (infinitely more exciting than Oxford). I felt plagiarised!

I also thought it a great shame that I didn't get to read those books as a book-hungry 12-year-old. Instead, I ploughed my way through vast quantities of Sweet Valley High books, a series following the lives of Californian identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, who (we were reminded in every single formulaic book) were blond, blue-green eyed, five feet six and a perfect size six. The books were so very dull and yet I somehow came to possess several hundred of them (now shut away in my parents' storage unit). The books managed to be incredibly naive and very over the top at the same time - Elizabeth, the "good", responsible twin (i.e. the boring one) had a steady boyfriend, Todd, throughout; Jessica, the naughty twin was always getting herself and her sister into trouble and worked her way through a constant stream of boyfriends (to be fair, I can think of at least three of Jessica's boyfriends who died in tragic circumstances during the one year of high school the books were supposed to occupy; that's just careless! You'd think that after a while she'd learn her lesson and stay away!).

The SVH books skirted around the topic of sex as much as possible (the girlfriend of the twins' older brother was allowed to have a pregnancy scare but she was twenty and so permitted to use the word sex), though clearly someone who was as much of a party girl as Jessica would clearly have done it with at least one of her boyfriends. The books were written from 1984 until 2002 but even the more recent, "racier" ones tend to shy away from sex when they can. Gossip Girl is the polar opposite: promiscuous 17-year-olds (God forbid!), an overly sexualised 14-year-old (what?) and plenty of sex scenes, which I am sure will be played up for the screen (not that this is needed).

Young adult fiction just wasn't like this in my day!

Nonetheless, I shall watch Gossip Girl's long-awaited TV début (it was originally to be made into a film before getting picked up as a TV show) with interest.