Material Witness

Farewell then, the truly marvelous Mrs Maisel

It is the season of goodbyes. Tomorrow we bid farewell to the ghastly Roy family and next week will see Ted Lasso's last match on the sidelines at AFC Richmond  (why you should watch Ted Lasso). I'll miss both of these outstanding series, but not nearly as much as I will miss The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, who completed a five season run on Amazon Prime on Friday.

The final episode was a perfect microcosm of those series, filled with the sharpest writing, superb performances and an exuberant production design that has brought rampant colour and irresistible style to our television sets since its 2017 premiere.

It was entirely fitting that the final scenes saw aging versions of Jewish housewife-turned-stand up-comic Midge and agent Susie zinging one liners at one another down a phone line and laughing as the screen went black. It is Midge and Susie, brought to life magnificently by Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein, who have given the show heart and soul as they fought together to build names and careers for themselves in a late 1950s world built and managed by and for men. 

As soon as the final episode ended I flicked straight back to the first, in which we are introduced to Midge on her wedding day, when she shows her fearless talent for both comedy and controversy making an impromptu champagne-fuelled speech that closes with a declaration to her predomininantly Jewish audience that, "yes, there is shrimp in the egg rolls". The first episode closes with Midge being arrested after flashing her breasts at the audience in the Gaslight club where she is making her first unplanned stand-up appearance. Susie watches from the audience her expression awe-struck as she spots the natural talent.

I was hooked all over again by what I think might best be described as the creative and charming chaos of Mrs Maisel. And it made me realise that for all the brilliance of the performances of an exceptional cast and the luminous design it is the writing of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel that is the real star of the show. This is the writer's craft at its finest. The scripts are dynamic, moving the story along at pace, but also sensitive and true to character. It has a structure and shape that is complex and expressive but always feels natural. And it's funny and fearless, poking a sharp and pointed stick at everyone and everything from Jewish mothers to misogynistic producers. 

With so much of the streaming world occupied with swords and sandals or spies and cops, Mrs Maisel was a breath of fresh air when she burst on the scene exploring an entirely different world than that which television audiences have been trained to appreciate. Like all long running shows, it has had its peaks and troughs, but in season five Mrs Maisel recaptured the freshness and purpose of the first season and finished, as all the very best shows do, on the highest of highs. 

 

REVIEW: The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor's fine historical fiction has been a favourite of this blog over a number of years. Taylor has always been capable of delivering the critical detail and atmosphere to wrap around his strong narratives and memorable characters. His writing is evocative, thoughtful and exciting.

In recent years Taylor has taken us back to the Restoration with his Marwood and Lovett (lately Hakesby) series that takes place after the Great Fire of 1666 and in a terrific series - this is the sixth and apparently final installment in the series - he has done for the Restoration what CJ Sansom did for the Tudors, bringing finely-tuned mystery into the heart of the court, and over-layering it with political and personal drama.

The Restoration is a time pregnant with possibility for historical fiction as social upheaval, foreign subterfuge and scientific advancement gripped. As the monarchy reasserts its power, led by a popular and charismatic King - last seen up close in The Royal Secret - there is plenty of scope for high court intrigue and low behaviour. Marwood, as an administrator to Secretary of State Lord Arlington, whose responsibilities were said to include management of royal mistresses, has ample opportunity to find trouble, and it's never far away. Like Shardlake, he becomes a reluctant investigator and often unwilling tool of the state. 

In The Shadows of London, Marwood is drawn into another investigation when a corpse is discovered on the site of an alms house construction being managed by Cat Hakesby. The lack of face on the cadaver hinders the intitial investigation, but eventually and inevitably, it points towards the royal court. 

Marwood, despite his position in the employ of one of England's most powerful men, remains vulnerable to the machinations of other important courtiers and it isn't long before he is drawn back into the orbit of his implacable enemy the Duke of Buckingham and his attack dog, Roger Durrell. 

Bubbling away in the background as ever, is the "will they won't they" tension between the two main characters, a storyline that provides an anchor to the series but it never overdone. 

One of the joys of historical fiction is being brought face to face with the notable characters of the day. In the past we have been introduced to Sir Christopher Wren and King Charles himself, and here the celebrated diarist and courtier John Evelyn makes a cameo appearance.

I'm sorry to see this series go, but Taylor leaves it on fine form with a pacy and absorbing story full of drama and incident. Surely this most prolific of writers will be back soon with something different and I look forward to the next turn. Books such as Bleeding Heart Square, a personal favourite, and  The Anatomy of Ghosts, has shown that no era is safe from his formidable imagination and impeccable research. 

REVIEW: The Close by Jane Casey

Will they or won't they? That's the question, the golden thread of tension that's been keeping Jane Casey's reader guessing since she first introduced the fatal attraction between DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent.

The relationship has played out over the course of nine police procedural novels where it has acted as an emotional mooring for the series, never too far from the surface but never dominant. 

In this tenth instlament, however, Casey blows the format sky high moving Kerrigan and Derwent out of London and into the highly fertile territory of the domestic thriller. The two Met detectives are sent undercover at the behest of a senior aide to the London Mayor to try to discover how her brother-in-law ended up dead. They leave London for the deceptive tranquility of semi rural England where, posing as a couple, they spy on their new neighbours in a Ramsey Streetesque cul de sac.

Never mind that the set up is more than a little contrived, it doesn't matter a bit as it allows Casey's talent free reign to deliver a tense and intriguing thriller and put the "question" front and centre. It works an absolute treat. Forced to play the happy couple to, the detectives test their commitment to their professionalism to destruction as their circumstances force them closer together than ever.

And the rest of the story roars along too. Casey populates The Close with an entertaining and disturbing cast of busybodies, gossips, loners, narcissistic lycra-clad bike bros and yummy mummies. Kerrigan and Derwent have been  sent to observe just one house, but after a couple of weeks see threats and potential murderers behind every closed door and net curtained window.

Casey's just very very good at this. Besides the question and the primary investigation, she keeps several threads alive, including an ongoing investigation back in London that Kerrigan is managing through Zoom calls. She explores important difficult issues such as domestic abuse and the exploitation of vulnerable adults. And it's all done at a pace that never feels hurried but keeps a good momentum up towards a dramatic conclusion. It's another fine episode in the series, which I reviewed here a couple of years ago.