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The Catherine Cookson Experience

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Round Tower”

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Wow, it’s been a long time since I visited a Catherine Cookson! Ladies and gents, welcome to The Round Tower. It’s a sweet little romance about an upper-class girl, a middle-class boy, and the bairnsketball that comes between them! The Round Tower probably Cookson’s most in-depth look at class differences in mid-century England and the turmoil caused by the idea of someone wanting to change their socio-economic strata through hard work. However, since most of those parts were filmed with the light from a single desk lamp, you can’t really tell. It also has some of the skeeviest lines of any Cookson. Just…wow. This poor, poor young lady. Vital Stats: Era: 1950s. And 1960s. And maybe 1970s. Also maybe 2150. They’re in some time warp where they never age and yet five hundred years of the viewer’s lifetime pass before their eyes as they watch! Heroine: Vanessa Ratcliffe. Siblings that require looking-after: Nope! Illegitimate (Self or sibling): She gets a bairnsketball thanks to her father’s skeevy friend. Does that count? Asshole Father?: Oooh yeah. Romantic… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Man Who Cried”

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[Previous episodes of The Catherine Cookson Experience here.] This week, the CCE delivers my biggest letdown so far: Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root, stars of the Persuasion (best Austen adaptation ever), team up again! And man, they suck. Welcome to The Man Who Cried, which is about a good-looking dude (Ciaran Hinds: well cast, casting person) who keeps tripping and falling into ladies, which disgusts him, just disgusts him. Why won’t these women stop getting with him, damn? He spends four hours being emo about how he just wants to be Left Alone with some other woman than the one he’s with at the moment. (Doesn’t matter which woman he’s with; he wants a new one.) Vital Stats: Era: 1930s, just before WWII Heroine: Ciaran Hinds. Siblings that require looking-after: His ten-year-old kiddo. Illegitimate (Self or sibling): He begets one! Nice job, Ciaran. Asshole Father?: Yeah, Ciaran. Romantic interest(s): Every woman on the planet. Bairnsketballs: Yup…CIARAN. Fistfights: Largely nonviolent, except for ladies lunging at Ciaran and attempting to climb him like a tree. Assaults: See… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: The Girl

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So, after last week’s happy-go-lucky tale of nice girls with the memory capacity of a goldfish, we get into the gritty reality of what life was like for the ladies of the 1850s. (Answer: sucky.) Behold, The Girl! Note: There are Cooksons worse than this, but few Cooksons duller. We will be skipping over large portions of repetitive, depressing malarkey. The point Cookson is trying to make: sucks to be a lady in the 1850s who had to make a good marriage Or Else. Point we take away from it: sucks double to be a lady whose only options are your rapey husband or that dude down the street who gets drunk and insults you. (Also, you fall in love with the second guy, which means in this scenario you probably have a concussion. I’m sorry to hear that.) Era: 1850 Heroine: Hannah Boyle, the young illegitimate daughter of gentleman Mr. Thornton. OR IS SHE? Siblings that require looking-after: She has three half-siblings who mostly suck, but in case she’s the one that requires looking… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Tide of Life”

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So, there are two or three more really dismal installments of The Catherine Cookson Experience coming up, and I thought that before I hit all the marital rape and spouse-slapping, everyone could use one that’s pleasantly absurd. Behold, The Tide of Life! Here’s the thing about this miniseries; Gillian Kearney is a really good actress. She worked her ass off in The Forsyte Saga, and I really love the sort-of-documentary biopic she did on BBC, and — she’s not the poor soul who played Cissie Brodie, is what I’m saying. She has genuine charisma, and you root for her. The problem with The Tide of Life is that while she seems perfectly sweet and capable of making normal-person decisions, she agrees to go steady with any dude who enters the frame, so you end up wondering if she has a concussion. Also a problem: the title sounds like a tampon ad. (Not Cookson’s fault; just saying.) Era: early 1900s Heroine: Emily Kennedy, housekeeper and concussion victim Siblings that require looking-after: One sister, also a concussion… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Dwelling Place”

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This week, I tackle the seemingly endless and screamingly worst of all the Cookson adaptations I have seen, The Dwelling Place. Brief note about the Experience: I don’t think I’ll be recapping each one. Some of these are deadly dull stuff. However, I’m starting out with some of the really terrible ones to build appreciation for the ones that aren’t so bad. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome involving overwrought, cheaply-made period dramas of the 90s. By the time I hit The Wingless Bird, you’ll think I’m screencapping Citizen Kane. So, The Dwelling Place is about the fiercely beautiful and clever Cissie Brodie, who marries her rapist. I’d like to say this is an unusual screencap, but it’s not. We just sort of have to take the movie’s word for it that she’s smart and pretty, since she spends most of the movie staring blankly into space and marrying rapists. Anyway, after her parents’ death, Cissie packs up her passel of brothers and sisters and moves them all into a cave to prevent them having to go… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Glass Virgin”

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We begin The Catherine Cookson Experience with “The Glass Virgin.” This miniseries was the one that started it all – and stopped it all, since I didn’t go back to another one for over a decade. By the end of my re-watch, I knew why. The Glass Virgin is about a young girl, raised as gentility, who finds out she’s actually the daughter of a whore and therefore socially untenable. Distraught, she leaves the house with estate groom (and total hottie) Manuel in tow. Will she make it in a cruel working world? Will he make it into a life as his own man? Will they, you know, Make It? NOTE: These screencaps are awful. I can’t do better. Think of it as part of the joy, like that soundstage echo in the 1970s Masterpiece Theatres. Era: 1870s Heroine: Annabella LeGrange, gentlewoman, seventeen, dumb as a sack of hair Siblings that require looking-after: None, unless you count Annabella. Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Self. Asshole Father?: Check! Romantic interest(s): Manual Mendoza, the groom at her estate… Read more »
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