DOWNTON ABBEY - THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS - SEASON THREE - Book review

Julian Fellowes script for Season Three of Downton Abbey was published in 2014.  The ITV series was broadcast in 2012. There are eight episodes plus the controversial Christmas Special. Dotted lines alongside the script text indicate sections of text that were cut or partially cut from the original script to make the final edited version; however, in some cases it appears that some ‘cut’ scenes did make it into the DVD version.

The format follows that of the first two season books, with many pages containing illuminating and interesting footnotes on the scene, the characters or the reasoning behind the text; sometimes with humorous asides and personal anecdotes. There are eight pages of black-and-white photos from this season, and lists of cast and crew.

Episode one begins with Robert losing a lot of money on an investment in the Grand Canadian Trunk Line railway, a real event. Sadly, the genius behind the line died on the Titanic – a disaster which neatly creates fresh repercussions for Lord Grantham, echoing episode one of the first season.

Alfred, a new Downton footman, was 6ft6ins tall. Apparently, before the period of the drama, footmen were paid by height; the tall six-footers commanding a higher salary; essentially status symbols (p21).

Besides a great deal of social commentary and history (including ‘the Troubles’ in Ireland), there are insights on constructing the drama – which apply to fiction-writing in general. Mr Fellowes makes a comment about avoiding repeating information the viewer (or reader) already knows. ‘You structure a scene so that it finishes just as they’re about to get the information you already know, or you start the scene when they’ve just got it. Sometimes you can’t avoid a slight repeat, but you do work against it’ (p56).

There’s an interesting and even topical aside when Bates is in prison, accused of murder. ‘If you want a country to accept the end of the death penalty (which I am sure is right), then people need to feel confident that a murderer in cold blood is going to have a very tough time of it. The more who come out after six years and then immediately murder someone else, the more damage is done. One of the main arguments against the death penalty used to be that there was a risk of wrongful conviction, but the trouble is, far more innocent people have died at the hands of released murderers than were ever hanged wrongly, so it doesn’t really hold water. The point being that too many today do not have faith in the legal system’ (p209/210).

I wasn’t aware of the fact that unlike in America (and elsewhere) an English agent will not allow a client to sign for more than three years for anything (p254). This explains why at least three main characters had to be written out at some stage. Sometimes, it may be some way through the season before an actor or actress announces they don’t wish to go on further. This creates problems for the script writer: for instance the first five episodes of this season had been written and cast before Dan Stevens made his intentions known.

Throughout the series there are cases of ‘moments of bonding: Carson and Robert, Carson and Mary, Mary and Anna, and so on. (Showing) a chance of birth that has made Anna work for Mary and not the other way round, and these scenes underline that’ (p311).

The travails of Thomas are thoughtfully presented. ‘I’m always against judging anyone according to a type. It doesn’t matter if it is something positive. All type judgements are worthless, because they generalise the individual. Here, what happens to Carson is that eventually, although he doesn’t approve, he comes to see that it is not Thomas’s fault’ (p405). Mr Fellowes also mentions a relative Constance Lloyd who actually married Oscar Wilde. When the scandal broke and Wilde was imprisoned for ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ apparently Constance was ostracised by all who knew her. She changed her name and wandered through Europe until her early death aged 40.  

There are many reasons why some scenes/text had to be shortened or removed. One amusing excision is this:

ROBERT: Someone should invent a new kind of telegram, so you could send a whole document at once. Just like that.

ISOBEL: And if a document, why not a person? Like H.G. Wells’s Time Machine. You’d just get in, press the button, and step out in Deauville.

VIOLET: Would we be allowed to take a maid? (p423).

Certainly, Maggie Smith (Violet) tends to get most of the best lines:

EDITH: How tiny the glens make one feel.

VIOLET: That is the thing about nature. There’s so much of it. (p516).

What is impressive that the ensemble cast – about eighteen – all have a part to play and a story to tell. The casting is perfect, even when newcomers appear for one or two episodes. On reading the scripts I can hear the actors’ voices. There’s emotion, laughter, tragedy, plotting, villainy; in fact all human nature is here – what we’ve come to expect.

To date, this appears to be the last book of scripts. Certainly Mr Fellowes has been busy since, apart from three Downton films after the end of the series. He’s a workaholic, despite his uncontrollable neurological condition, essential tremor.

Minor pedantic gripe about the TV credits: it states Written and created by Julian Fellowes. However, surely it was created and then written?

THE PARADOX MEN - Book review

Charles L. Harness’s classic novel The Paradox Men was first published as a short story in 1949 and then in novel form in 1953. There’s an Introduction by Brian Aldiss – I read this after I’d finished the book.

We’re in the future – 2177 – (as viewed from the late 1940s), after the Third War. Now, there are small settlements on the Moon, Mercury and solarion stations that hover over the sun’s hot spots, the latter stations  harvesting invaluable muirium. Of the original 27 solarions only 16 now remain; ‘the average life of a station was about a year’ (p114).

It begins with a sort of prologue: ‘He had not the faintest idea who he was’ (p10). At this point we don’t know either. Then we’re straight into the action with a superior thief in the Society of Thieves, Alar, who is burgling Count Shey’s demesne. Shey is future Earth’s Imperial Psychologist. Alar is discovered but escapes. Alar is protected by a plastic invisible shell that makes him impervious to gunfire; however, sword and knife blades can penetrate the carapace. Swords and duelling have made a comeback!

Meanwhile, the Chancellor of America Imperial, Bern Haze-Gaunt is at loggerheads with his female partner, Keiris who used to be married to Kennicot Muir, who had created the Society of Thieves which was dedicated to rob from the rich and buy the freedom of slaves. Keiris is not quite what she appears.

Haze-Gaunt employs a disfigured man, the Microfilm Mind – ‘he functions on a subconscious level and uses the sum total of human knowledge on every problem given him’ (p29). In effect, he scans thousands of books and documents in order to formulate responses – much like AI today.

Imperial Police seem to be everywhere. This is a police state, after all.

There are debates and observations on time and space and gravity which threaten to be mind-boggling, and yet they’re carried off convincingly.

Alar joined the Society of Thieves five years ago and has no recollection of his life before that... So this is a quest for his identity, but also an attempt to overthrow the present administration. In his journey Alar begins to discover certain abilities he was not aware he possessed. His relationship with Keiris develops: there is a devastating revelation in Chapter 14 following an unpleasant torture...

The ending is probably not the ending but most likely the beginning...

Editorial comment:

Uses IP’s for Imperial Police; it shouldn’t have an apostrophe: IPs would do.

They travel to the Galastarium (p88) and yet on the same page it’s spelled Galactarium!

RADIGAN - Book review

Louis L’Amour’s novel Radigan was first published in 1958.

Tom Radigan has worked on his land at Vache Creek in New Mexico for five years with the help of half-breed John Child. He’s taken aback when a Texan woman, Angelina Foley, comes into the nearby town claiming the land is hers, not Tom’s. She backs up the claim with a Spanish grant and about thirty men, mostly hardcase gunfighters, and several hundred of cattle.

Told in third person omniscient point-of-view, the story moves along fast with L’Amour’s inimitable wry viewpoint.

Radigan’s gaze was ‘disconcertingly direct in times of trouble, and men who faced him at such times found that gaze unnerving and upsetting to sudden action. At least such reports had come from three men... two others had been in no condition to volunteer any information’ (p5).

Radigan and Child are joined by the latter’s adopted daughter, eighteen-year-old Gretchen; he traded four horses for her from the Comanche Indians.

Convinced that the Foley claim is bogus, Radigan is determined to fight for what is rightfully his.

Like many L’Amour westerns, you cross a well-described land, knowing that the author has trod and ridden here and he is familiar with the whole terrain. And there's a map of the relevant area. The various characters are neatly drawn with a few brush-strokes. The descriptions are at many times visual, so that you’re there:

‘Raindrop felt his cheeks with blind, questing fingers... the black trunks of the trees were like iron bars against the grey of gathering pools’ (p12).

‘The stage rolled to a stop and the cloud of dust that had pursued it now caught up and drifted over it, settling on the horses and around them’ (p57).

‘Firelight flickered on the flanks of the horses and reflected from polished saddle leather’ (p82).

There is a fist-fight or two, a gunfight, all leavened with suspense and action, and not forgetting humour:

‘he was thinking, working around the herd of his thoughts trying to get a rope on the one he needed...’ (p120)

‘Loma Coyote was not much as towns went, and as towns went, Loma Coyote would someday go’ (p155).

‘My name is Will Haftowate. And that’s what you’ll have to do’ (p161).

A satisfying quick read.

SHAKESPEARE'S PLANET - Book review

Clifford D. Simak’s novel Shakespeare’s Planet was published in 1976. After a thousand years in space, The Ship lands on a planet. Unfortunately, three of the four humans have died due to a malfunction in the cryogenic system, so when Horton is revived, he is alone – apart from the robot Nicodemus. Ship comprises the minds of three – a monk, a grande dame and a scientist. ‘It was only when the three were one, a one unconscious of the three, that the melding of three brains and of three personalities approached the purpose of their being’ (p1). It seems there’s a Biblical allusion here: ‘As the centuries went on, they were collectively convinced they would become, in all truth, the Ship and nothing but the Ship’ (p2). The three minds frequently ‘converse’, explaining how they became The Ship.

Horton and Nicodemus encounter a strange rather vicious creature that is named Carnivore. Not so long ago, Carnivore had shared the planet with a human who called himself Shakespeare, who was a bit of philosopher: ‘The emergence of intelligence, I am convinced, tends to unbalance the ecology. In other words, intelligence is the great polluter. It is not until a creature begins to manage its environment that nature is thrown into disorder’ (p119).

Sometimes Carnivore has an inverted way of expressing himself, much like Yoda in Star Wars: ‘You mean fix it you cannot?’ (p124).

Nicodemus is an interesting character in his own right. He is a basic robot though he can turn his hand to all manner of skills thanks to a number of transmogs that he can plug into – essentially computer apps.

Horton perceives a number of most puzzling aspects to this new planet, including the strange phenomenon of ‘the god-hour’, ancient derelict cities, a potentially sinister black pond, the mysterious arrival of the human female Elayne, and a wormhole that is blocked. ‘Just when you feel that you are ready to grasp some meaning of it, then it is all gone’ (p136).

There is not a lot of action, but there is plenty of mystery. Some of the best bits involve Nicodemus’s humour.

An imaginative excursion. 

THE FACE OF A STRANGER - Book review

 

Anne Perry’s Victorian crime novel The Face of a Stranger was published in 1990. This is the first William Monk book – there were 24 altogether. However, Perry had already had published nine books featuring her team of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt (there are 32 in this series). At the time of her death in 2023, aged 84, she’d had 102 books published.

At the end of July, 1856, William Monk regains consciousness in hospital. He’d forgotten his name and all of his past up to the accident three weeks earlier. He soon learns that he is Peeler, a Metropolitan Police Detective Inspector. An envelope in his belongings tells him his home address – 27 Grafton Street – where for the first time he looks in a mirror. ‘It was not that it displeased him especially, but it was the face of a stranger, and not one easy to know’ (p20).

Briefly, he visits his sister (knowledge gleaned from his desk) in Northumberland where he recuperates. When he returns to work, his boss Runcorn gives him a difficult six-week-old murder case to solve. Major the Honourable Joscelin Grey, a Crimean war hero and a popular man about town has been killed in his rooms. He’s teamed up with a novice, John Evan.

Monk’s problems are mounting. He can barely remember how to behave as a detective, though happily he has his wits about him and conceals his memory loss, not wanting to lose his job. From what he can discover, he had not been particularly liked by his fellow policemen. Piecing together his past was going to be no easy task: ‘...learn to know himself, and he would grow firmer memories in reality. His sanity would come back; he would have a past to root himself in, other emotions, and people’ (p67).

Runcorn suspects a member of the House of Lords but has no proof. Monk has to tread carefully – again at risk of losing his job. During his investigation, Monk meets a number of gentry as well as a nurse recently returned from the Crimea, Hester Latterly. ‘Hester was abrasive, contemptuous of hypocrisy and impatient of dithering or incompetence and disinclined to suffer foolishness with any grace at all. She was also fonder of reading and study than was attractive in a woman, and not free of the intellectual arrogance of one to whom thought comes easily’ (p174). Hester is indeed a worthy foil for Monk.

The Crimean War figures in the story through traumatic memories, and includes snippets about Alan Russell, the brave war correspondent and Rebecca Box, a heroic nurse. The terrible slums of the London rookeries are depicted well. It is not all grim; there is humour and some enjoyable verbal fencing.

Perry’s grasp of the Victorian period brings the story to life. There is one moment that brought to mind Michael Dibden’s The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978); however, as the tale went on I was happily disabused of that thought entirely. If I had one criticism it would be Perry resorting to dialect for a few minor characters.

An excellent historical mystery novel.