Mildred Pierce

An off the cuff reaction to this five parter, more or less immediately after completion, more or less on five successive evenings.

Thinking that holiday cottages cannot always manage ITV3 and often have a poor choice of DVDs, I thought I had better see if I could find something in the Epsom branch of CeX (reference 1) before we set off for the country - and turned up this five parter, never before heard of, at the knock down price of something of the order of £2.50. Not bad at all for 329 minutes viewing time.

It turns out to be from the same sort of stable as 'Game of Thrones', an expensive costume drama made for pay as you go television. More nudity than they like on regular TV in the US. Lots of attention to period detail. Very arty job on the opening sequences, repeated for each of the five parts - by which time the artiness has palled a little. All of which rather reminded me of our adaptations of Agatha Christie stories. And of the recent Atkinson job on some of the Maigret stories. Same sort of period, as it happens.

But something different was all the nicely judged human touches, the sort of thing that Spielberg is so very good at. Feel good stuff. Most people are pretty decent underneath it all, after all. The sort of schmaltzy stuff that we do not bother with much in the programmes that we make.

I was also pleased at the amount of air time given to La Laguna, a town visited in the intervals of one of the Filenet conferences mentioned in the post before last, a place where I met the ant man checking the wooden piles holding up the beach side houses and where I bought my first copy of 'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer, a book I have since read several times.

Rather let down to my mind by overdoing it: the story line was just a bit too fantastic, you could not help but wonder where the first leading lady got the time and money to do it all - on the back of two or three start-up restaurants - starting from nowhere as an abandoned wife who could cook a bit and who had two children to bring up.  Or how the second leading lady (the daughter of the first leading lady) managed to switch from failed piano to successful coloratura when she was nearly twenty. She was also improbably horrible. All rather irritating in same way as the houses in Jane Austen adaptations seeming to double or treble in size between page and screen.

Verdict: good value for money.

Next stop: the 1945 film of the same name.

PS: maybe this was the prompt for Filenet getting into my dream this morning?

Reference 1: https://uk.webuy.com/.