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Sep. 24th, 2014 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raincitygirlI was re-reading Minette Walters’ debut mystery novel The Ice House” recently, and then I re-watched the BBC mini-series, which came out in 1996, starring Corin Redgrave and a not-yet-famous Daniel Craig as the police, Penny Downie, Frances Barber, Kitty Aldridge as the women, and Baby!James!d’Arcy, presumably fresh out of drama school, as Downie’s son. Both book and mini-series have their faults, but one thing that’s interesting, and I don’t think can be said very often, is that the mini-series is actually quite a lot better than the book in some ways.
Short version, with some spoilers but as few as possible. Phoebe Maybury (Penny Downie) lives at Streech Grange in rural Hampshire with her two oldest friends (Frances Barber and Kitty Aldridge), and village gossip has it that they’re in a lesbian ménage-a-trois. Village gossip also has it that Phoebe killed her abusive husband David 10 years before, when he disappeared without a trace. The police investigated her extensively at the time, but with no body and no direct evidence were forced to eventually let the matter drop. Now a badly decomposed body has turned up in Phoebe’s ice house. Phoebe and David have 2 children, 20 year old Jonathan, a medical student in London, and 18 year old Jane, who’s just started university and is recovering from anorexia.
In the book, Jonathan is perfect. He’s a cardboard cut-out of a character, with no flaws. He’s nice to his mother and little sister, he’s engaged in a romantic relationship with the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, he’s…boring as hell and brings nothing to the narrative. It’s as though Minette Walters was so interested in her complicated central characters that she forgot her secondary characters have to be believable too. And Book!Jonathan is ridiculously well-adjusted, given what he’s been through. There comes a point at the climax of the book when he just snaps, and goes ballistic on a tertiary character, and his rage seems to come out of nowhere, because it’s not built on anything in his previous characterization.
Lizzie Vickery, the screenwriter who adapted Walters’ book, changes Jonathan radically, and makes his relationship with Phoebe much more complex and interesting and makes Phoebe herself more layered. It’s not a “what about the menz” thing. Jonathan remains a secondary character and Phoebe remains a central character. But he becomes both believable and interesting. First off, the pointless romantic subplot is ditched altogether, and none too soon.
David Maybury brutalized Phoebe physically and sexually for years, as well as molesting their daughter Jane. She is conditioned by years of experience to be terrified of male anger. And here’s her sweet little boy all grown up, much taller than her, and mad as heck about his lousy childhood and what was done to his mum and sister. To the point where Phoebe almost flinches every time Jonathan disagrees with her, and does flinch when he raises his voice. She doesn’t mean to be afraid of him, and she still loves him, but in a way she is indeed afraid of him.
Downie gives a really nice, subtle performance here, incidentally, doesn’t overdo it, but still conveys that Phoebe *cannot* deal with Jonathan’s anger, even when it’s not directed at her. And sometimes it is directed at her. Jonathan, understandably, is not particularly thrilled that his mum obviously doesn’t trust him. She secretly marks the bottles when he drinks, to find out how much he’s drinking, and if he’s turning into an alcoholic like his father.
I’m aware that plenty of survivors of domestic violence raise sons to adulthood without being scared of their rage, but the screenwriter brings up an interesting possible scenario. One where it’s nobody’s fault (well, it’s David’s fault, but he’s been gone for 10 years) but Phoebe’s son treads all over her PTSD triggers simply by existing in his grown-up form. Towards the end of the mini-series, Phoebe and Jonathan quit edging around each other uneasily and finally have the fight that’s been brewing since the start of the mini-series (actually, the fight’s probably been brewing since Jonathan turned 13) and both finally get some closure. It’s not a happily ever after, they will probably always have an uneasy relationship, but Phoebe is finally able to open up to Jonathan, and he doesn’t reject her.
Anyway, none of this stuff happens in the book, and it should, dammit. I’m just glad they fixed the problem when they adapted it for TV, but it’s odd, because usually TV or movie adaptations of books simplify the book, instead of chipping away and exposing new veins of plot and character depth.
Short version, with some spoilers but as few as possible. Phoebe Maybury (Penny Downie) lives at Streech Grange in rural Hampshire with her two oldest friends (Frances Barber and Kitty Aldridge), and village gossip has it that they’re in a lesbian ménage-a-trois. Village gossip also has it that Phoebe killed her abusive husband David 10 years before, when he disappeared without a trace. The police investigated her extensively at the time, but with no body and no direct evidence were forced to eventually let the matter drop. Now a badly decomposed body has turned up in Phoebe’s ice house. Phoebe and David have 2 children, 20 year old Jonathan, a medical student in London, and 18 year old Jane, who’s just started university and is recovering from anorexia.
In the book, Jonathan is perfect. He’s a cardboard cut-out of a character, with no flaws. He’s nice to his mother and little sister, he’s engaged in a romantic relationship with the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, he’s…boring as hell and brings nothing to the narrative. It’s as though Minette Walters was so interested in her complicated central characters that she forgot her secondary characters have to be believable too. And Book!Jonathan is ridiculously well-adjusted, given what he’s been through. There comes a point at the climax of the book when he just snaps, and goes ballistic on a tertiary character, and his rage seems to come out of nowhere, because it’s not built on anything in his previous characterization.
Lizzie Vickery, the screenwriter who adapted Walters’ book, changes Jonathan radically, and makes his relationship with Phoebe much more complex and interesting and makes Phoebe herself more layered. It’s not a “what about the menz” thing. Jonathan remains a secondary character and Phoebe remains a central character. But he becomes both believable and interesting. First off, the pointless romantic subplot is ditched altogether, and none too soon.
David Maybury brutalized Phoebe physically and sexually for years, as well as molesting their daughter Jane. She is conditioned by years of experience to be terrified of male anger. And here’s her sweet little boy all grown up, much taller than her, and mad as heck about his lousy childhood and what was done to his mum and sister. To the point where Phoebe almost flinches every time Jonathan disagrees with her, and does flinch when he raises his voice. She doesn’t mean to be afraid of him, and she still loves him, but in a way she is indeed afraid of him.
Downie gives a really nice, subtle performance here, incidentally, doesn’t overdo it, but still conveys that Phoebe *cannot* deal with Jonathan’s anger, even when it’s not directed at her. And sometimes it is directed at her. Jonathan, understandably, is not particularly thrilled that his mum obviously doesn’t trust him. She secretly marks the bottles when he drinks, to find out how much he’s drinking, and if he’s turning into an alcoholic like his father.
I’m aware that plenty of survivors of domestic violence raise sons to adulthood without being scared of their rage, but the screenwriter brings up an interesting possible scenario. One where it’s nobody’s fault (well, it’s David’s fault, but he’s been gone for 10 years) but Phoebe’s son treads all over her PTSD triggers simply by existing in his grown-up form. Towards the end of the mini-series, Phoebe and Jonathan quit edging around each other uneasily and finally have the fight that’s been brewing since the start of the mini-series (actually, the fight’s probably been brewing since Jonathan turned 13) and both finally get some closure. It’s not a happily ever after, they will probably always have an uneasy relationship, but Phoebe is finally able to open up to Jonathan, and he doesn’t reject her.
Anyway, none of this stuff happens in the book, and it should, dammit. I’m just glad they fixed the problem when they adapted it for TV, but it’s odd, because usually TV or movie adaptations of books simplify the book, instead of chipping away and exposing new veins of plot and character depth.
