It started with Casualty 1900s, which I wrote about before and have watched all of about five more times since my birthday. But even I can't watch a series incessantly. I needed a break, something new and stimulating. But I was still in a "historical" mood, so bring on Foyle's War, which my best friend had been recommending for ages.
Foyle's War, if you don't know, is a British TV series set in WW2 Hastings. Each episode is about an hour and a half long (so two hours when it aired on ITV, a commercial network). Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle is a WW1 veteran who (eventually) sees his role in the war effort to be keeping down crime on the homefront - murder doesn't stop being murder just because there's a war on.
Each episode is a discrete story; the story arcs come from the war itself and the main characters. Foyle's sergeant lost a leg in the Norway campaign; Foyle's son is in the RAF; they're in Hastings, on the coastline, so fear of invasion is a running theme for a while. Each episode is incredibly grounded in the real events: Dunkirk, the American presence, the Blitz, the Normandy invasion, etc. It's so well-researched; in addition to being a compelling procedural, it gives such a vivid picture of life on the coast and the homefront during the war. I learned about things that I'd never known existed (like Exercise Tiger) and got a sense for things that I couldn't possibly experience. And I can't say enough good things about the actors. I fell in love with them all. (However, as a warning: the murder in the first episode is the most vivid and quite horrific.)
Next on the list was Life on Mars, which keeps on with the historical police drama theme. It's so different from Foyle's War, though: in Life on Mars, the main character is in a car accident in 2006 and wakes up in 1973. Is he mad? in a coma-induced hallucination? or actually a time-traveller? It's never made 100% clear, although the last episode leans greatly toward the coma-induced hallucination with a touch of near-death time-travelling.
This is another series where the actors and the characters totally make the series. The stories themselves aren't anything too special and unique; it's the characters, especially John Simm as Sam Tyler, that make them shine. The final episode in particular was stunning. I had tears in my eyes at the end. It was heartbreakingly sad and inevitably right at the same time.
Next on the list was the BBC miniseries of Casanova. David Tennant and Peter O'Toole. *sigh* It was incredibly funny. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be funny, given that it was written by Russell T. Davies... There were some absolute laugh-out-loud moments. David Tennant overcomes many different levels of bad hair and just leaps off the screen. I may be biased here, but he was just fantastic. And Peter O'Toole as the aged Casanova exuded faded sexuality - he's always been wonderful and I'm so glad he's still acting. I completely believed the love between Casanova and Henriette (even though it's probably not historically accurate....and why isn't Laura Fraser better known?) and now I want to read Casanova's memoirs. Just skimming the Wikipedia article made me realize that his romantic reputation is only a small part of who he was. (Well, not small. That enduring legend couldn't be founded on anything .... small.)
The last series I want to mention is Lost in Austen. It was quite cute, and I enjoyed some of the liberties they took with Pride and Prejudice (especially Wickham. I unashamedly loved Wickham in this version. They made him believably redeemable). It did fall into the Darcy trap but not for long, and it was quite amusing to watch Amanda panic and try to "fix" everything. Causes and consequences were kind of hand-waved away, but it's a charming enough series.
Next time: films.
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