Hear, hear!

I was looking forward to watching the 5-part dramatization of Len Deighton’s 1978 novel, SS-GB, which I’d read and enjoyed many years ago. 

Unfortunately, the BBC chose to schedule it in conflict with an ITV series I’m already watching, The Good Karma Hospital. The BBC does this a lot; it doesn’t need to, since it isn’t really competing for paying viewers (or advertising space). So, I consoled myself with the thought that I’d eventually buy the DVD of SS-GB.

Now, I might not bother. There have been so many reports from a variety of sources that the director is an advocate of the Mumbling School of Drama. I won't surrender!

Considering this series is likened to a noir detective drama, I’d have thought the director would have seen the old noir movies featuring Bogart, Mitchum, O’Brien, Lake, Cagney, Robinson, Raft, Lorre, and Duryea to name a few. These had atmosphere, but also good diction (even when mangled American!), and the music never smothered the dialogue.

This is only the latest example of a number of recent productions that I have decided not to watch. I recall some time ago watching an episode of the new Dr Who; at a critical juncture, the good Doctor was making a dramatic announcement, but it was drowned out by the foreground music. I gave up on that series.

SS-GB is directed by Philipp Kadelbach and stars several German actors who spoke their native language on set and on screen, with subtitles. Great authenticity. Interestingly, some viewers commented that they found it easier to understand the Germans than anyone mumbling in English. A number had to resort to subtitles to comprehend what was being mumbled by the English-speakers.

The day after the transmission, a BBC spokesman said they “will look at the sound levels on the programme in time for the next episode.” You’d have thought that somebody might have considered doing that before transmission, considering that there have been other mumbling issues for the BBC involving Jamaica Inn, the crime series Quirke, and Happy Valley.

There’s no issue with other series, such as Game of Thrones, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries, for example, all of which have dark themes and an international cast; even the Dothraki is intelligible in Game of Thrones!

At least I can hear what all the international cast of actors are saying in The Good Karma Hospital. That’s good karma, indeed.

Book of the TV series - Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates

First in the Miss Fisher Mystery series of books by Kerry Greenwood, Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates was published in 1989. Its title was Cocaine Blues (though in the US it was called Death by Misadventure). Since then, over the years Miss Fisher has gained many readers from age 17 to 90. The popularity of the books has only increased since the airing of the TV series first in 2012 – now the third series is available on DVD  – starring Essie Davis, which is perfect casting.

To date, Kerry Greenwood has published twenty Miss Fisher novels, the latest being Murder and Mendelssohn (2013). The short story collection A Question of Death (2008) features Miss Fisher also and has been mined for the TV series. The first episode of season one retained the Cocaine Blues title.

Although Phryne Fisher’s family was poor prior to the First World War, all male heirs to a British peerage were killed in the conflict and her father inherited the title and moved to England with the family. The book begins in 1928 with Phryne, rich and bored, solving a jewel theft and then being asked to investigate a Colonel’s daughter who is married, living in Melbourne, Australia: they fear she is being poisoned by her husband. Phryne agrees and moves to the antipodes.

We soon learn that Phryne is not your normal aristocrat. After completing school, she ran away to France and worked with a women’s ambulance unit in the war. Now, she can fly a plane, and drives her own car (a Hispano-Suiza) and is quite comfortable wearing trousers. Her personality seems to match exactly that of her 4th century BC namesake; apparently, when born her father had chosen to christen her Psyche, ‘due to a long evening at the Club the night before, when he was called upon for her name, he had rummaged through the rags of a classical education and seized upon Phryne. So instead of Psyche the nymph, she was Phryne the courtesan.’ (p16)  

The story unfolds effortlessly, with light humour interspersed with a social conscience. Drug dealing – cocaine, obviously – and illegal abortion figure in this tale. Phryne is an emancipated woman, happy to love and leave men – she has no wish for commitment or children. A Russian dancer, Sasha, intrigues her while attending a soiree: ‘The guests were silenced by a painful mixture of Schoenberg and Russian folk-song, derived from musically obtuse Styrian peasants who had absorbed their atonality with their mother’s milk. The sound hurt; but it could not be ignored. Too much of it, Phryne was convinced, would curdle custard.’ (p77/78) Sasha is on a quest of his own, too, and she gets involved in more ways than one.

Her investigations inevitably bring her into the evil orbit of hoodlums: two men accost her – one, with a waxed moustache containing ‘rather more crumbs than fashion dictated…’ while the other possessed a ‘thin moustache like a smear of brown Windsor soup. Both had suggestive bulges in their pockets which told of either huge genitalia or trousered pistols. Phryne inclined to the handgun theory.’(p81)

Along the way, Phryne recruits Dot as her maid and confidante, and taxi drivers Cec and Bert as her spies and contacts. She briefly meets Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, who is blissfully unaware how Miss Fisher is going to turn his world upside down in future adventures.

An enjoyable crime caper with likeable characters and plenty of plot. As I came to the book after watching the TV series, I tend to hear the character voices from the show, which is praise to the scriptwriters who have captured the essence of the book(s).

[Puzzling why the UK publisher doesn’t use the TV series images on the covers; the publisher of the Murdoch murder mysteries had no such qualms: possibly a contractual issue.]

Essie Davis - Miss Fisher TV series - Wikipedia commons