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Dorothy Sayers' Whimsey novels - do you know the (1980s) TV adaptations?

366 replies

JeanneDeMontbaston · 10/01/2015 11:33

I wasn't sure where to put this thread, but it feels as if it'd be more at home here that the TV threads. I love Dorothy Sayers. MN introduced me to her. I wish they'd do another adaptation, but the 1980s ones are surprisingly good.

The wonderful sconerhymeswithgone showed me the existence of these on youtube. (The link is to Gaudy Night, because that's what I'm watching, but there are lots of earlier ones).

What do you think? I liked the casting, but I have quibbles. And the ending to Gaudy Night is a travesty, right?

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PetulaGordino · 11/01/2015 14:35

irene thanks for the explanation of the roses in the book. interesting that they have them in the first place!

YonicSleighdriver · 11/01/2015 13:38

Yy Irene, and althougj both Freddie and the dowager duchess mention anti Semitic attitudes, neither seem to have them and Reuben Levy is also sympathetically reflected in the first book.

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/01/2015 11:42

I know, right?! It's so annoying.

I know not everyone agrees, but I think Harriet works it out just as quickly as Peter - she just feels conflicted and doesn't want to accept the possibility. The TV version makes it sound as if he does it all.

Also, I really don't get the point of the Bunter/Peter train journey into Nazi Germany. I know Peter is off doing mysterious things for the Foreign Office (though not in Germany!), but that felt totally clunky. It was as if the director thought, 'shit! Best make it clear this Important Male Character has Important Male Skills and doesn't just clear up mysteries for women'.

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IrenetheQuaint · 11/01/2015 11:25

There is a sympathetically drawn black character in Unnatural Death. Obviously I appreciate that one nice black character does not = author with total understanding of race issues! But it is unusual for 1920s English fiction where there are very few black characters indeed.

I am now all Angry about the 1980s Gaudy Night and I haven't even seen it! (And not going to.)

ZeroFunDame · 11/01/2015 11:14

Oh goodness! Just finished the EP/HW Gaudy Night. Had forgotten how the scriptwriters eviscerated the book.

Perhaps I lied when I said it's the detail that makes the difference with DLS. More than anything it's probably the balance between Harriet's and Peter's points of view. The books would be so much less if we only knew what was going on in the mind of one or the other. The TV show kept that but lost everything else - including Peter's adorable nephew. No chess pieces, no dog collar, none of the stuff that takes ones breath away. And they made it look as if Harriet was a mere spectator and did none of the actual sleuthing or deduction. Angry

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/01/2015 09:57

Yes, I think it is.

And yes, I think she would have. I think she'd also be shocked how little's come on, in terms of gender, though.

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ZeroFunDame · 11/01/2015 09:18

If she were alive today I hope she would have the perspicacity to write about race in the same way.

I'll look out for that essay. I'm guessing it's in the volume Are Women Human?

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/01/2015 09:02

Good point, zero, it is annoying.

I don't know what to make of that essay. But I'm glad I read it.

I can't find it online, but do you know her piece titled 'The Human-Not-Quite-Human'? It's long, but she's basically talking about how to imagine a situation of reverse sexism and how it indicates how sexist we are. It's good.

'Probably no man has ever troubled to imagine how strange his life would appear to himself if it were unrelentingly assessed in terms of his maleness ... If from school and lecture-room, Press and pulpit, he heard the persistent outpouring of a shrill and scolding voice, bidding him remember his biological function. If he were vexed by continual advice how to add a rough male touch to his typing, how to be learned without losing his masculine appeal, how to combine chemical research with seduction, how to play bridge without incurring the suspicion of impotence.'

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YonicSleighdriver · 11/01/2015 08:53

Love your name. ZFD!

ZeroFunDame · 11/01/2015 06:36

Earlier I marked my place on this thread with a throwaway comment, intending to come back - and didn't. But reading other people's comments at four in the morning reminded me of something I had been meaning to do.

I've just spent an hour, finally, reading Dorothy L. Sayers' essay The Lost Tools of Learning

www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html

I'm grateful to this thread for prompting me to read it at a time when I could concentrate - in the past I just skimmed through it.

Gaudy Night was published in 1935, this essay in 1947. (The oppositional language of the introduction is understandably militaristic in its tone.) I've never thought of the novels as "innocent" - everything in them was predicated on Peter's experience of the first war. But I wonder how different they might have been, written ten or fifteen years later.

And, of course, I'm annoyed once again that DLS, who existed in the same intellectual sphere as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, is almost never accorded the same reverence.

PetulaGordino · 11/01/2015 00:09

No sorry I didn't think you were implyig that eiyher, i was just continuin fromy previous post about why she couldn't say the word lesbian

it's a curious thing, like a doublr-negative, isn't it?

YonicSleighdriver · 11/01/2015 00:08

Me too, Irene , reinforced by Eiluned being a bit stroppy with peter (I can carry the kettle, thanks)

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/01/2015 00:04

I didn't mean to imply she was!

My granny would have been the same - in fact, she'd barely be able to discuss any kind of sex without euphemisms.

But I think there is also quite a tendency to think that lesbians are women who dislike men, rather than women who like men fine but prefer sex with women.

Sorry, this is way off topic!

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PetulaGordino · 11/01/2015 00:03

X-post - yes, I think there is a huge amount of bafflement which comes from ingrained assumptions

PetulaGordino · 11/01/2015 00:02

Yes I don't think my grandmother is homophobic, it's just that "lesbian" was not a word that would ever have been used by someone like her

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/01/2015 00:01

It's still so much how a lot of people see female homosexuality, though, isn't it?

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Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/01/2015 00:00

That said, I do find all the euphemisms interesting. I don't know when 'musical' came in as a euphemism?

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IrenetheQuaint · 11/01/2015 00:00

Yes, this is why I didn't pick up on the lesbians in Strong Poison until I was well into my 20s. I thought 'anti-man' meant 'didn't like men' rather than 'actively shagged women'.

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 10/01/2015 23:56

Oh, my dad still does that.

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PetulaGordino · 10/01/2015 23:56

I have a cousin who is a lesbian, and when she came out, my grandmother didn't just say that X is a lesbian, she said "X doesn't like men". I was baffled for a few minutes until my mum translated it!

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 10/01/2015 23:53

There's a lot to be said for bearded maths graduates too, holly. Smile

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 10/01/2015 23:53

Oh, sorry, irene, missed your question.

No, I've not read it, and I admit I've been a bit put off because I know the outlines of the plot. But I should.

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HollyBdenum · 10/01/2015 23:52

They were pretty definitely lesbians in the book, too.

I was desperately in love with Peter Wimsey for most of my teens. And twenties. I did GCSE Latin in the hope that one day I would meet a man who would propose to me in Latin. I read Donne and Catullus and ended up falling for a bearded maths graduate who can't even speak French.

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 10/01/2015 23:51

I love the bit where she blows smoke in his face.

She is in fact just awesome all round. She reminded me of a young Sandi Toksvig (the voice and manner, rather than the sexuality!).

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ArcheryAnnie · 10/01/2015 23:46

I have just rewatched the first part of Strong Poison for the first time in mumblety-mumble years, and the TV lesbians in it were great!

In the book Eiluned was indeed described, very cheerfully, by Marjorie as "rather anti-man".

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