There are few arenas left to the drab, ponderous, period meledrama.
Masterpiece Theatre is one such venue. Here we are not looking for excietment or laughs. We want a sixteen hour rendition of a Dickens classic or a brooding tragic romance set against the English Civil War. What we don't want, atleast as far as I don't want, is an insipid pirate movie done badly. That is what I had to choke down last night.
Russell Baker, to Alister Cook what beef jerky is to Filet Mignon, tried his level best to set us up with all the approriate historical background. Story takes place during the Glorious Revolution. William of Orange is sacking London and driving James II to his boy toy the King of France.
The Catholics are again in danger of being persecuted by the new Protestant king. The heroine, a bawdy, boring, lustless, little hipocrite, and her two children, a boy that says nothing, and a girl that nearly gets a man hanged just cuase shes pissed at her mom, flee the city to their stately, and really run down, country home in Cornwall. There the lady, forgetting about her husband in London and not caring much for her kids, hithces up with a pirate that is played badly by some french dickhead with long hair. I guess they wanted the Flabio look.
They go about steeling a ship because it's owner had bored the lady at a dinner party. The pirate is captured and is on the way to his justly deserved execution when at the last minute he is saved by the lady. Then both are nearly killed by some court dandy only to be saved from the dandy by the ladies husband who wants to save his wife just so she can leave him and the kids to travel the sea as a pirate. What a bunch of crap!
In the end she does not leave with her pirate bo. She heads back to her estate and lives ambigously ever after with her stuffy and affectionate husband the dandy killer of Cornwall.
What urks me about this movie was that it:
A: stunk as a pirate movie and
B: Stunk as a drama. A pox upon those that made such a skanky movie.
Furthermore I find it incredulous that PBS would allow such nonsensical bacteria to fester on there network. If I wanted to wtch crap I could just as easily turn to ABC.
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