Post by sistermoon on Nov 20, 2011 16:03:50 GMT
Reading this in my book group - ITV's adaptions of Catherine Cookson's novels have been a joke in this house due to the ludicrous miscasting of actresses not from the North-East in leading roles (The jolly-hockeysticks girl from Foyle's War, Honeysuckle Weeks in 'The Rag Nymph' FFS!)
The whip of the title refers to the whips left to Emma Molinari from her late dad, a circus performer. She is passed on to her gran's residence in Durham where she works on the farm and gets to know people in the area.
My problem with the book is that a lot of Cookson's novels seem to conform to the same template of 'poor girl rises from humble stock to be in a rich neighbourhood' and it grinds my gears when people on the farm give her the 'know your limits' speech (as familiar to fans of the Harry Enfield shows) or the 'she should know her place' retort (cue that sequence from the Frost Report show where Ronnie Corbett says 'I know my place' to the upper-class John Cleese and middle-class Ronnie Barker)!
I also think a lot of these period dramas work like the traditional view of country songs - one disaster after another! In passing there's guilt about young kids going down the mines, slavery, poverty in general and the failure of Atlantic Records to release Tony Banks's 'Wicked Lady OST' on CD (okay, I lied about the last one!).
Can't wait for the ITV adaption where the part-Spanish heroine is played by, say, Nina Wadia (the 'in your dreams, buddy!' girl from Goodness Gracious Me). I'm left feeling that snobbery never changed through the centuries.
The whip of the title refers to the whips left to Emma Molinari from her late dad, a circus performer. She is passed on to her gran's residence in Durham where she works on the farm and gets to know people in the area.
My problem with the book is that a lot of Cookson's novels seem to conform to the same template of 'poor girl rises from humble stock to be in a rich neighbourhood' and it grinds my gears when people on the farm give her the 'know your limits' speech (as familiar to fans of the Harry Enfield shows) or the 'she should know her place' retort (cue that sequence from the Frost Report show where Ronnie Corbett says 'I know my place' to the upper-class John Cleese and middle-class Ronnie Barker)!
I also think a lot of these period dramas work like the traditional view of country songs - one disaster after another! In passing there's guilt about young kids going down the mines, slavery, poverty in general and the failure of Atlantic Records to release Tony Banks's 'Wicked Lady OST' on CD (okay, I lied about the last one!).
Can't wait for the ITV adaption where the part-Spanish heroine is played by, say, Nina Wadia (the 'in your dreams, buddy!' girl from Goodness Gracious Me). I'm left feeling that snobbery never changed through the centuries.