Twisted Spinster

Update: preliminary Casanova review. Okay, here’s a memory from my childhood. I think I’m in high school, and I’m, I don’t know, in my room doing whatever — listening to Jimi Hendrix on the radio or something (I was in high school in the disco era but I managed to avoid that in my bedroom). Anyway, I go out to get some more Coke or Doritos or something, and my mother is watching teevee, and she says “My gosh, you should have seen this — they just had this woman having sex with all these men right there on tv in front of God and everybody.” The show she was watching was the I, Claudius episode where Messalina makes a bet with the whore that she can sleep with more men, and then has sex with, I think, 74 men in one night. She won. Let’s just say that Masterpiece Theater has always been a reliable source of prime time sex scenes since the 70s, and you could even get the occasional flash of ass, all before cable was even a dream. Now if you’ll excuse me.

Update, and ending thoughts: actually, it surprised me, though not really — like all of these “ain’t rampant sex and fun fun fun grand” epics it ends on a sad, chastened note, with a not very convincing declaration by the young amanuensis that, inspired by Casanova’s wild, useless life, she’ll “strike out on her own.” Yeah I guess the filmmakers have to say that, but the obvious lesson one gets from Casanova is that the wild life is no life to live.

As for the production itself, it was “hey it’s that guy” for anyone who watches current British tv. (For example, Casanova’s servant/best buddy was played by the same actor who played Martha Jones’ dad correction: the Captain in the “Impossible Planet/Satan Pit” episodes in Doctor Who.) The performances were all good — these are British actors after all. I’d like to know what they did to turn David Tennant’s normally brown irises blue to match Peter O’Toole’s — probably some film treatment thing. The costumes were anachronistically avant garde, especially in the hallucinogenic Naples scenes, but the series was obviously not dedicated to stringent historic verisimilitude. Russell T. Davies was the executive producer, so there was a gay-ish atmosphere all over everything, but they chickened out with the castrato love interest who turned out to be a real girl. I was rooting for a real boy, myself. I guess he used all that daring stuff up on Queer As Folk.