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

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

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?

Agoodbook -the Roderick Alleyn books have been filmed, some of them anyway. Patrick Malahide is Alleyn and Belinda Lang is Troy. They ar ebeing repeated on some channel or other at the moment. Malahide is not my idea of Alleyn but he makes the character quite likeable.

I very much like the Petherbridge/Walters adaptations and think the casting is pretty spot on. What I'd like to see is a really good Albert Campion, not Peter Davidson.

That was to JdM, btw.

Oh, Have His Carcase is really good on TV, I think.

I found the book (sorry!) slightly whiny.

I agree, Charles Parker isn't a lot of fun.

We have got them all and watch them every few years. Ian Carmichael was good, but too old. The first Bunter was by far the best. Edward Petherbridge was excellent, but Harriet Walter was wooden and all wrong imo.The only film that I think she is any good in is Louis Malle's Milou en Mai.

I can't think who could top EP and HW nowadays so maybe it would be better for them not to re-do them!

I love Gaudy Night and having worked at an Oxford College I can confirm that the High Table conversations are the same now as they were then! It really made me smile the first time I heard the discussion as I'd just been re-reading it 'the students aren't like they were in our day'... There is so much of Oxford in that one and it is so accurate that you can trace their footsteps.

Would be good to see the Rory Alleyn books as a series. I've been reading them over the last year and have just finished Scales of Justice. Who would play Rory, Fox and Troy though?

Nooo! Wooden?

I didn't think so. Though, 'dear idiot' is not only wooden but cringey.

Who would you have instead?

pigeon, I have a friend who proposed to his now-wife in roughly the same spot Peter asks Harriet for the last time.

Though he didn't say 'placetne magistra,' which is probably sensible.

JeanneDeMontbaston

thanks artus will have a look for them!

Harriet Walter is brilliant! I saw her as Henry IV in the recent all-woman adaptation and she is as good as ever.

Jeanne - that's fantastic! If someone proposed to me in the right place (it's near the Sheldonian, isn't it?) with 'placetne magistra' I would accept immediately. Even if on sober reflection I didn't like him that much.

Me too, irene, me too.

I also know someone else who had the sonnet they co-write as a wedding reading.

I love EP and HW as Peter and Harriet, but I think Strong Poison and Have His Carcase are much better than Gaudy Night (which is a great shame as I utterly love Gaudy Night, the book - I read it first when I was 12 and it's probably not too much to say that it changed my life).

It's not just that they ruined the ending, it's that Peter expresses some distinctly misogynist views that simply aren't attributed to him in the book (though they are there, expressed by other people). It's a particular shame because one of the reasons I love the book so much is Harriet's gradual realisation that marriage to Peter doesn't have to mean the end of independence and equality - the bit where he writes to her essentially saying that he trusts her judgement and wouldn't want her to be turned back from doing the right thing just because it's disagreeable.

Have His Carcase and Strong Poison are much more like the books!

Yes, that pissed me off too.

Also, I think in the book, the relationships between the women come across much better. Miss Hillyard has a concrete reason for disliking Harriet so much, and Miss Lydgate is a much nicer character.

I have a horrible feeling that the bloke who adapted GN for TV honestly thought that having Peter say 'ooh, but I'm not mansplaining' meant he really wasn't.

Yes, I agree, Jeanne - in the book there's a real sense of the college as a community of people whose work is important to them and who just happen to be women. You get a sense of the strain they're under with the Poltergeist experience, but it's also very clear that their relationships are good when the college isn't being assaulted- there's no suggestion of back-biting or bitchiness, and I suspect the director couldn't imagine a whole group of women who didn't behave like that.

Ian Carmichael did most of the audiobooks and did an awesome job, IMO.

Not Five Red Herrings though, which is the only one to give Parker a Barrow-in-Furness accent.

KLAXON: the 1980s ones are being repeated right now on Drama!!! Thurs even I think.

YY, I agree with that, robin, about the director's view.

One of the things I think is well done in the book, is the way Harriet starts off being so impressed by the way the college tries to look out for the ordinary lives of staff, and then of course it's exposed that they don't (or can't?) do it perfectly. In the book, that's one of the central questions, how much women should compromise their own needs for other people. And that really doesn't come across at all in the TV version.

Also, why on earth did they bother to film the punting bit? It was just dull (the way they filmed it, not the original. The original rocks.)

I'm basically just marking my place for the YouTube link but also to say that I also enjoy the repeats of the radio series they sometimes do on 4 extra

I'll check those out.

And enjoy the youtube.

Thanks for the link. I think te radio series are te Ian Carmichael ones yonic is referring to too

Well, I can see that it would be difficult to depict the massive sexual tension of the punting scene on film... so much of it is in Harriet's head, isn't it.

Have just watched episode 1 of Have His Carcase on youtube and it is excellent! I'd forgotten the bit where she asks to make another phone call and one thinks 'oh, she is going to ask Peter to come up asap to support her' but no, she rings the Morning Star and convinces them to put the story on the front page to get more publicity for her new book

Agree about Bunter, though, he is too young and just wrong somehow. Plus I couldn't help remembering a piece of dodgy Wimsey/Bunter slashfic one of my friends sent me recently

I'm watching the first episode of strong poison and it seems funny to me that the judge has a case of red roses on the table in front of him! Is that usual do you think?

But the did the massive sexual tension just fine in Have His Carcass!

I think slash (not Bunter/Peter, mind, cos that'd be crossing class boundaries! ) is semi-canon.

Sir Impey Biggs is 'the handsomest man in England, whom no woman will ever want'. When they meet, Peter's voice becomes 'more husky ... than usual'.

C'mon! It slashes itself!

Yes, I didn't get the roses either. I remember noticing them, so presumbly they have some Deep Point?