flyby update
Oct. 31st, 2016 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaIs it mean-spirited to spend Halloween hiding in the back room with all the lights switched off? I just really kind of resent the commercial hijacking of an ancient pagan tradition - and I especially resent that it's become an excuse for all the neighbourhood kids to learn extortion. So I'm hiding.
I haven't updated in a while, since free time is becoming a rare commodity. I have found time to check out the new Doctor Who spin-off, though - Class is currently airing on Saturdays on BBC3. I think I'm well and truly past the target demographic, but I'm enjoying it anyway, it's been promising so far. I've always enjoyed Katherine Kelly's work and I'm loving her as Miss Quill, and I like the other characters too (although the show does fall into the eternal telly trope of hiring 20-somethings to play teenagers). Plus, it's the first high school show I've ever seen that actually reflects the kind of ethnic demographic that was my personal high school experience, so there's that (in my A'level history class there were eight students, of which two were white, the rest from a variety of backgrounds - none of us noticed until the teacher pointed it out, because we didn't think of each other that way). And, you know, it's the Whoniverse. I'm liking it more than I liked the last few seasons of the main show!
Also on my tellybox currently is the second season of Poldark, which is still very beautiful and all the actors are very lovely, and the show is doing a better job of balancing and interweaving sub-plots than it did in season one, although it continues to deviate from the source material in sometimes inexplicable and damaging ways - I really wish Debbie Horsfield had more faith in Graham's novels as written. I also wish she'd read the entire series before attempting to adapt it! She has admitted she only read each book as she adapted it, and it shows - she's had to backpeddle more than once as a result of this approach. But so far she's doing a lovely job with Dwight and Caroline, and since I'm all about Dwight and Caroline when I read the books, that's what I care about most!
But Poldark is no longer on my live viewing schedule, because Y Gwyll began its third season last night on S4C, delegating Poldark to catch-up viewing. It's the first time I've managed to catch Y Gwyll for the Welsh language version on S4C - two seasons in a row I've managed to completely miss it thanks to not realising it was on, and had to catch the bilingual Welsh-English version Hinterland on the BBC a few months later. So the next few Sundays are going to be all about Y Gwyll, which remains as atmospheric and as plot dense as ever.
In other news, family stuff remains difficult - my little sister is not coping with motherhood, the combination of autism and post-natal depression sending her into something of a spiral, leaving her intensely vulnerable and easy prey for negative influences, to which she is sadly susceptible. One so-called friend in particular is taking advantage in a big way, and nothing anyone says or does seems to pull her out of the spiral. So the burden of childcare falls to my parents, who are applying for a child arrangement order to safeguard the baby's future. Layla-May, however, remains oblivious to all of this - she is the happiest little soul in the world (except when you turn a camera in her direction, whereupon she becomes very solemn). At 13 months she is very tall and very active - she's not just walking confidently, she spends all day running, non-stop! One day she might even have hair...
But my Mum and Dad are in their late 60s, and it's a big burden for them to take on, so I am stepping up as the support system and am currently spending a lot of time being Aunty 'Ro-Ro'.
I haven't updated in a while, since free time is becoming a rare commodity. I have found time to check out the new Doctor Who spin-off, though - Class is currently airing on Saturdays on BBC3. I think I'm well and truly past the target demographic, but I'm enjoying it anyway, it's been promising so far. I've always enjoyed Katherine Kelly's work and I'm loving her as Miss Quill, and I like the other characters too (although the show does fall into the eternal telly trope of hiring 20-somethings to play teenagers). Plus, it's the first high school show I've ever seen that actually reflects the kind of ethnic demographic that was my personal high school experience, so there's that (in my A'level history class there were eight students, of which two were white, the rest from a variety of backgrounds - none of us noticed until the teacher pointed it out, because we didn't think of each other that way). And, you know, it's the Whoniverse. I'm liking it more than I liked the last few seasons of the main show!
Also on my tellybox currently is the second season of Poldark, which is still very beautiful and all the actors are very lovely, and the show is doing a better job of balancing and interweaving sub-plots than it did in season one, although it continues to deviate from the source material in sometimes inexplicable and damaging ways - I really wish Debbie Horsfield had more faith in Graham's novels as written. I also wish she'd read the entire series before attempting to adapt it! She has admitted she only read each book as she adapted it, and it shows - she's had to backpeddle more than once as a result of this approach. But so far she's doing a lovely job with Dwight and Caroline, and since I'm all about Dwight and Caroline when I read the books, that's what I care about most!
But Poldark is no longer on my live viewing schedule, because Y Gwyll began its third season last night on S4C, delegating Poldark to catch-up viewing. It's the first time I've managed to catch Y Gwyll for the Welsh language version on S4C - two seasons in a row I've managed to completely miss it thanks to not realising it was on, and had to catch the bilingual Welsh-English version Hinterland on the BBC a few months later. So the next few Sundays are going to be all about Y Gwyll, which remains as atmospheric and as plot dense as ever.
In other news, family stuff remains difficult - my little sister is not coping with motherhood, the combination of autism and post-natal depression sending her into something of a spiral, leaving her intensely vulnerable and easy prey for negative influences, to which she is sadly susceptible. One so-called friend in particular is taking advantage in a big way, and nothing anyone says or does seems to pull her out of the spiral. So the burden of childcare falls to my parents, who are applying for a child arrangement order to safeguard the baby's future. Layla-May, however, remains oblivious to all of this - she is the happiest little soul in the world (except when you turn a camera in her direction, whereupon she becomes very solemn). At 13 months she is very tall and very active - she's not just walking confidently, she spends all day running, non-stop! One day she might even have hair...
But my Mum and Dad are in their late 60s, and it's a big burden for them to take on, so I am stepping up as the support system and am currently spending a lot of time being Aunty 'Ro-Ro'.
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no subject
Date: 2016-10-31 10:05 pm (UTC)I am about two episodes behind the UK in Poldark because I'm watching along the US broadcast (at least it's only a few weeks behind instead of several months this time!), but I have been enjoying it, and I'm glad that you think it has been doing at least a slightly better job. I loooove Caroline and Dwight too! <33 They are definitely my faves at this point, and the only romantic couple I am really rooting for, since Poldark is a lost cause.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-01 06:22 am (UTC)This show gives me so much inner conflict, because it does so much so beautifully, but as an adaptation it could have been so much more, if only Horsfield had more faith in the source material - and if only she'd read the entire series before attempting to adapt it! I've wondered at times if I'd enjoy it more if I hadn't read the books, but then I remember that it was growing unease with the show (and the contrast with the older adaptation) that made me read them in the first place. The books are so subtle and nuanced, but almost every scrap of that subtlety has been stripped out of the show - Horsfield can't seem to stop herself over-egging the pudding at every turn. She exaggerates so much in the name of Teh Dramaz. George is practically a moustache-twirling villain at this point - just one of the instances in which she's had to backpeddle, after presenting him startlingly sympathetically in season one.
In season one she also exaggerated all Francis's flaws and removed every one of his strengths (he is a very different character in the books, and again she's had to backpeddle on him in season two, which wouldn't have been necessary if she'd just presented him as written in the first place) and now in season two she is doing the same thing to Ross, taking his failings to extremes. I'm finding some of the changes really unnecessary - like switching up the sequence of events, so that show!Ross gives the £600 to Elizabeth before having his own debt reprieved, which makes him look awful, as if he's putting Elizabeth ahead of his own wife and child. Done, no doubt, to emphasise his ongoing feelings for Elizabeth and to undermine his strained relationship with Demelza, but that isn't how it happens in the books. In the book, Caroline anonymously buys Ross's debt first, and that's what gives him the idea of doing the same for Elizabeth, now that he feels slightly more secure and therefore better able to step up and provide support for the other side of the clan.
I dunno, it can make for quite jarring viewing at times, like watching a version of Pride & Prejudice in which everyone is acting out much the same plot but all their personalities are slightly off, and then every now and then they do implausible, OOC things - like if after Darcy's first proposal Elizabeth went straight to Charlotte and talked it through with her, just for the narrative convenience of having her vocalise her internal struggle for the screen, character integrity be damned. It's why I roll my eyes every time I see Horsfield receiving plaudits for her 'genius' adaptation, because it's far from that. She's done a decent enough job with limited screentime for the material, but a truly genius writer could have done so much more, without sacrificing the integrity of the characters at every turn.
But I do love Dwight and Caroline in every version of this story - Dwight's story got shortchanged enormously in season one (like, his entire backstory was changed, which effectively robs him of his entire arc) so I'm very happy to see him brought forward as the major character he always should have been this season.
Oh, this turned into an essay and you probably didn't want to know all that! I'll shut up now. :D
no subject
Date: 2016-11-01 02:02 pm (UTC)Re Poldark, I'm enjoying Dwight and Caroline too. They are both very pretty. Actually I quite enjoy the current Ross and Demelza, but for different reasons - the smack in the kisser was satisfying.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-02 08:40 am (UTC)I haven't read the Poldark books so am just taking it all at face value - and loving it. I don't fancy him as such but Aidan Turner has a magnetic attractiveness giving Ross and Demelza a wonderful on-screen chemistry.
At least around here people seem to respect the fact that if you don't put up decorations you don't want to be bothered - but we turn off the lights and hide as well, just in case :)
Carol