Sherlock: A Case of Evil was a 2002 made-for-television film that pits a twentysomething Sherlock Holmes (James D’Arcy) against his nemesis, Moriarty and I will state from the outset that, of the few portrayals of a younger Sherlock Holmes, James D’Arcy’s is, by far, the best. Everything about his performance (including the “look” which I consider to be indispensable) is pitch-perfect.

James D'Arcy = Young Sherlock Holmes

A Case of Evil begins with the upshot of an investigation that has Holmes  pursuing Moriarty through London; there is a confrontation, Holmes shoots Moriarty and the body falls into the river. The effect of this – as Moriarty is known to be a master criminal – is to make an instant celebrity of the young detective and Holmes revels in fame, and it’s perks. Depicting Holmes as an attention-loving and arrogant young luminary (when a policeman asks for his surname, he replies. “Holmes.” [pause] “With an L”) is an interesting notion and, in its way, Canonical. Early in their Canonical relationship, Watson is irked by Holmes’s “bumptious style of conversation”, and looks upon the detective’s swift deductions as “brag and bounce”; when Holmes explains his chain of reasoning, he is “pleased at [Watson’s] evident surprise and admiration”.

We see a hint of the self-conceit in the earliest – chronologically, speaking – case, The Gloria Scott, when the college-age Holmes forms a friendship with fellow student who is “the very opposite to me in most respects”, and pays a visit to the young man and his father. Urged to demonstrate his deductive powers, Holmes leads with the observation that is guaranteed to shock and impress. In A Case of Evil, we have the same hint of swagger, and the same readiness to perform his deductive parlor tricks.

What Piers Ashworth’s screenplay posits (some odd casting and plotting choices notwithstanding*) is that, as a young man, Sherlock Holmes was engaging, vain, energetic, and emotionally susceptible. As the story plays out, we learn that Moriarty’s “death” and the case that precipitated it had been a ruse. In flashbacks, we see that Holmes has a personal grudge against Moriarty’s, and the resolution of the case costs a young woman, of whom Holmes has become quite fond, her life. The screenplay endorses the theory that the Sherlockian self-control, aloofness, detachment toward women are not fundamental traits, but the assumed, an armor against suffering. Even in the later cases, we often witness emotion and reason at odds; more than once, Watson comments on his friend’s vanity and reserve,  thoughtlessness and chivalry, his impatience and generosity. Like Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet, Holmes is “so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice.”

 While the script does a very credible job in formulating a young Sherlock Holmes, it does tend to stray in other areas. Watson, here, is a rather unsophisticated police surgeon (and there seems to be a confusion about the era’s distinction between surgeon and doctor), to whom Holmes is introduced in the course of an investigation; yet, it has Holmes already living at Baker Street. (Sherlockians will recognize the inaccuracy). There is no sense that Watson is a man of worldly experience; there are, however, the glimpses of “pawky humor”, as when Holmes observed that there is “something abnormal about [a corpse’s] windpipe”, and Watson replies, “Yes. Normally, he’d be using it to breathe.”

Roger Morlidge as Watson

The humor extends to the script’s wry social jabs that offer “a distinct touch”. Holmes is hired by a wealthy opium importer whose clients are being killed off. Holmes – whose drugs of choice here are alcohol, including absinthe, and, of course, tobacco – despises both the client and drug use, an abhorrence that is explained in flashbacks. The gentleman rationalizes his occupation: opiates, he claims, are a “social necessity” for war veterans who have been introduced to morphine at battlefield hospitals and who continue to have “a taste for the drug” when they return.

Moriarty, who is at the root of the murders, scorns the importer for “building a criminal empire on a product that isn’t even illegal”, predicting that the real profits will come when drugs are prohibited, and that “They’re going to love it over there” (i.e., in America). Conversely, Watson, disparages Holmes’s use of tobacco, predicting that cigarettes will soon be banned by the government, while opium and cocaine, having medicinal uses, will always be legal.

Added to the interesting social landscape is the pulp reporter who dogs Holmes for headlines with all the tenacity of a paparazzo, shrugging off Lestrade’s challenge to his accuracy with, “We can always print a retraction next week.” Young Holmes is an assiduous collector of his own press clippings until the account assembled in his scrapbook becomes too personal and painful a record. Then, he decides, “I’d rather trust posterity to that diary of yours, Watson.”

*Re: the odd casting choices. Vincent D’Onofrio is Moriarty. Richard E. Grant (who was always on my Sherlock shortlist) is Mycroft. Perhaps they should have considered reversing the roles?

Vincent D'Onofrio as Moriarty

Richard E. Grant as Mycroft

And which Austen character would have enjoyed A Case of Evil? It is hard to believe that any of the young ladies of high sensibility – Catherine Morland, Marianne Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, Maria and Julia Bertram, the Musgrove sisters or even the frivolous Charlotte Palmer – could resist this handsome, dashing version of Sherlock Holmes, and perhaps Jane herself who, in one of her letters, writes of having “the dignity of dropping out my mother’s Laudanum” would have wondered at Moriarty’s notion that the such a common remedy would ever be made illegal.

 And three degrees of Austen? James D’Arcy had the starring role in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001) with Tom Hollander, who was Mr. Collins in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

I think I’ve said before, there’s times when you see an actor in something, and they’re just so perfect they get cemented in that role for all time.  No matter what else they do, or how good they are, they’re always going to be that other character to you.  Or maybe not ‘you’.  Could be just ‘me’; I have a tendency to stereotype people cause it’s so much easier than getting to know them as individuals.

That’s the case with me and Joss Ackland.  I don’t know the gentleman personally, but I’m sure he’s good and kind and helps little old ladies across the street, and lord knows he’s been in everything.  Trouble is, a couple of years ago I saw him in Hogfather, the BBC adaptation of the novel of the same name, where he played Ridcully, the blustering head of Discworld’s top (and only) wizard university.  As a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s books, Ackland was exactly how I pictured Ridcully.  Which means, as effective as he is as the tyrannical head of the Barrett clan, I’m always wondering where his pointy hat is.

Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.

Also his hair is a bit silly.

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Putting Sherlock Holmes on the track of Jack the Ripper is unquestionably tempting; the Ripper murders occurred at a time when Holmes would have been an ambitious thirtysomething detective and quite receptive to a complex and challenging case. There has never been a positive identification of the Ripper, nor any explanation (other than the obvious: he died, emigrated, was incapacitated or imprisoned) for the abrupt termination of the killings. Drawing Holmes into such an intriguing, open-ended puzzle has invited the talents of authors Ellery Queen, Michael Dibdin,  Edward Hanna, Carole Nelson Douglas and Lyndsay Faye.

 Holmes vs the Ripper has been the subject of a couple films as well, and one that is both the most and least satisfying is the 1979 film Murder By Decree. Here, the plot exploits one of the more colorful theories: that the murdered women had knowledge of an illegitimate child who was the result of an affair (or unofficial marriage) between the Duke of Clarence, second in line to the throne, and the lowborn Annie Crook. Defenders of the heir confine Crook to an asylum and pressure her to reveal the child’s whereabouts while they systematically kill off the prostitutes who were privy to the liaison.

The most laudable aspect of the film – in fact the only laudable one – is in the casting. Christopher Plummer (Holmes) and James Mason (Watson) are on the somewhat mature side, but there is a wonderful compatibility that is not often (read: “almost never”) depicted in translations of the Canon. Mason does make one appreciate that Watson may be the harder role to pull off; with fewer props on which to string a performance – no pipe, no violin, no disguise, no displays of agility or temperament – an accomplished actor has to flesh out the dimensions of character without sinking into caricature. The fact that Mason can express his indignation at Holmes’s “squashing a fellow’s pea” without lapsing into the blustering inanity that was the default mode of other actors (read: “Nigel Bruce”) is commendation enough. Plummer is equally engaging – without ever lapsing into uncharacteristic sentimentality, his performance hints at the “great heart as well as of a great brain”: commanding, compassionate, humorous and completely authentic, even when saddled with the deerstalker and Inverness.

Mason, Finlay (as Lestrade) and Plummer

There is an impressive supporting cast as well: Donald Sutherland, David Hemmings, John Gielgud, Anthony Quayle, Frank Finlay and particularly Susan Clark as Mary Kelly, and Genevieve Bujold as Annie Crook; their scenes with Plummer are the most poignant moments of the film. (As an interesting side note, Finlay, who portrays Lestrade here, also portrayed Lestrade in another Holmes vs the Ripper film, the 1965, A Study in Terror; Quayle, who here is Sir Charles Warren was Doctor Murray in the ’65 film).

Plummer with Clark (as Mary Kelly)

Plummer with Bujold (as Annie Crook)

As for the everything else: watching this again (I had seen it years ago), I realized what is unsatisfying about it. For a film that offers an intriguing theory about the Ripper that brings together a royal conspiracy and a vicious serial killer with literature’s most famous detective, the film is rather suspenseless. Perhaps it is the jarring score that forecasts every crime so relentlessly that the crime itself becomes almost anticlimactic. Perhaps it is the reticence with which the crimes are rendered – one can be shocking without being explicit. And, perhaps, it is the awkward angling of the exterior shots to camouflage the use of sound stages. At any rate, it remains just good enough to make a viewer wish it had been better.

Which Austen character would have enjoyed Murder By Decree? Colonel Brandon would certainly have admired Holmes for risking his life and reputation in a just cause; Frank Churchill would have understood keeping secrets out of self-preservation, and Mary Bennet may have drawn a useful lesson from the prostitutes’ conspiracy: that one false step can involve a woman in endless ruin.

And three degrees of Austen: Particularly easy here, since Donald Sutherland, who plays the psychic Robert Lees, was Mr. Bennet in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

My first introduction to Elizabeth Barrett-Browning came through the Baby-sitter’s Club books.  Specifically, Babysitter;s Club #8, Boy-Crazy Stacey, where Stacey (the diabetic New Yorker) and Mary Ann (the shy one) are on vacation with the huge Pike clan as mothers helpers, except Stacey falls hard for a lifeguard (who’s in college, I think, ooooo….) and basically ditches Mary Ann to take care of the forty Pike children by herself.  Anyway, early on in the book everyone heads to Burger Garden and there’s a rush to see who doesn’t have to sit with Vanessa, the aspiring poet who rhymes every single sentence.  ”No one,” explains big sister Mallory, “wants to sit with Elizabeth Barrett-Browning.”  It then has to be explained to aspiring poet Vanessa that Elizabeth Barrett-Browning is a famous poet.  Of course, this only strikes me as weird now.

Except that these books are awesome.

In honor of the January birthday of Sherlock Holmes (b. 1/6/1854), my January film notes will concentrate on a few of the more interesting screen re-imaginings of the world’s greatest detective.

The first, in keeping with the season, will be the Granada interpretation of The Blue Carbuncle, which I think did a superior job of transposing a Holmes tale. It had the advantage of being one of the earlier programs in the series, so you have Jeremy Brett, as Holmes, in better form and health than he was in the last installments, and David Burke, the actor who gave us the most faithful Watson.

Brett & Burke

The story, which appeared in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, involves the theft of a rare gem, the Blue Carbuncle, its discovery in the crop (the gullet) of a goose, and the goose finding its way to 221 B Baker Street.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle begins with Watson’s visit to Holmes two days after Christmas, but the filmed version gives us a prologue, as the Blue Carbuncle- “the precious stone”- is passed from one generation to the next, falling into the possession of the Countess of Morcar. The characterization of the Countess is a departure, but an interesting one: in the Conan Doyle story, she remains off stage, but offers a thousand pound reward for the gem, and Holmes observes that the Countess would “part with half her fortune” for its recovery. In the teleplay, she is a tight-fisted miser whose tip to the hotel servants is to be divided “for the three of you”, whose Christmas tree is a limp cheerless affair, who is infuriated by the suggestion that she ought to offer a reward for her own property; actress Rosalind Knight’s rendering of this worldly, lonely miser is shrewd and on point.

Rosalind Knight (left) as the Countess of Morcar; note the sorry-looking Christmas tree in back.

In fact, the entire translation of the tale, from the development of minor characters, the different arrangements of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen supplementing the score and the inspired direction of David Carson, render a visual equivalent of Conan Doyle’s prose with remarkable fidelity. There is a gentle humanity in the details – Henry Baker(who inadvertently comes into possession of the prized goose) whose shillings have not been “so plentiful as they once were”, nonetheless stops to give a coin to a beggar; Holmes groping for a match to light his morning cigarette, just frenzied enough to hint at graver addictions; and the near-farcical episode of Holmes conning a poulterer into a wager -  suggest an understanding of the Canon that is too often lacking in many modern renditions.

David Stuart Davies, in his excellent record of the Granada series – Bending the Willow – credits Brett with certain cynical details that stave off an excess of sentimentality: the early-morning craving for a cigarette, the curt dismissal of the pathetic Henry Baker who is, after all, only “a mere unit, a factor in a problem” (as Holmes remarks in The Sign of the Four). But it is in the comic scene where Holmes finesses a skeptical poulterer  that the episode really shines.

Three degrees of Austen? Jeremy Brett (Holmes) appeared in the TV version of The Merchant of Venice with Sir Laurence Olivier who was Darcy in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.

And who would have liked this film? Jane Bennet, always optimistic, would have sympathized with Holmes’s release of the culprit, though she might have been less cynical about his future, possibly hoping that he would “come to a right way of thinking”. A mystery involving stolen gems, a Countess, a detective and an unexpected conclusion would have appealed to Catherine Morland’s penchant for sensational fiction and perhaps Mrs. Nicholls, the Netherfield cook, employs her master’s long absence to catch up on reading and hopes for a stroke of good fortune when she rounds up “three couple of ducks, just fit to be killed.”

Heidi Alvesteffer is the winner of the Lady Vernon and Her Daughter book club giveaway! Heidi will receive 6 signed copies of the hardcover edition of Lady Vernon – congratulations!

While I lamented, in my remarks about A Christmas Story, that the modern Christmas films are either tailored to a star’s comic persona, or issues-oriented dramas that happen to take place in December, there had been a time when every Christmas season offered one or two very good holiday-themed television films. They were modest, by feature film standards, but infinitely superior to the Yule season tide of forgettable “All-I-want-for-Christmas-is-a-boyfriend”–like fare. Many of these productions were literary adaptations; they aired periodically and then were dropped from the holiday calendar. A few are available on DVD and all of them are worth hunting down or pestering Netflix to acquire.

Buddy and Sook

A Christmas Memory was one of the hour-long installments in the unsuccessful experiment, Studio 67, to develop an anthology of dramas, documentary and variety programming. First airing in December, 1966, it was adapted from Truman Capote’s autobiographical, Depression-era tale of the final Christmas that seven-year-old Buddy (Capote) spends with his elderly aunts. His aunt “Sook”, naïve and open-hearted is his best friend, and together they contrive to keep up their small traditions despite their poverty and the discouragement of their other relations. In a brilliant stroke, the decision was made to have Capote narrate and his languid, almost childlike recital sets the perfect nostalgic tone. Geraldine Page, as Sook, won Emmys for both A Christmas Memory and its sequel, The Thanksgiving Visitor. 

Addie wants a Christmas tree

The House Without a Christmas Treewas the first of a quartet of films based on children’s author Gail Rock’s “Addie Mills” series. First airing in the early 70s, it was a Christmas staple throughout the decade. The tale, set in mid-1940s Nebraska, is focused on spirited, 10-year-old Addie Mills and her embittered father who has not allowed a Christmas tree in the house since his wife’s death. When Addie wins a Christmas tree in a school contest, it brings about a confrontation and finally, reconciliation. Recorded on videotape, which was relatively new and raw in the 70s, but the performances of Jason Robards, Mildred Natwick and Lisa Lucas more than compensate.

Beautiful, rich and she sings!

The Gift of Love (1978) was based on the famous O. Henry tale, The Gift of the Magi. Here, the young lovers are wealthy, orphaned Beth Atherton and the poor immigrant Rudy Miller (Marie Osmond and Timothy Bottoms). Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century New York, and with some pleasant tunes, it’s pretty much Titanic without the iceberg, the shipwreck, and with James Woods as the rejected fiancé (here, diffident and somewhat “nerdy” rather than belligerent and possessive), and with a happy ending. There have been a few renditions of this familiar classic; this one embellishes it to accommodate the feature length, but never encumbers it with mawkish sentimentality.

Best scene in the film

A Christmas Without Snow, was written for television, and suffers from many of the films of the 1970s-1980s; that is, the social issues – racial tolerance, feminism, single parents – are served up with all the subtlety of a punch list. When the story is allowed to evolve from it’s premise, it’s a rather appealing Christmas tale. Michael Learned stars as a newly divorced woman who moves to San Francisco and is recruited for a church choir. As the demanding choir director prepares the singers for a Christmas performance of The Messiah, the lives of the choir members begin to connect and overlap. As with many of the 80s TV movies, A Christmas Without Snow has a somewhat pat, off-the-template look, but some very good performances – Ruth Nelson, James Cromwell, Beah Richards and John Houseman – give it an advantage over the standard Christmas fare.

"Mary" Herdman

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, based upon Barbara Robinson’s novel of the same name, first aired in 1983. Loretta Swit, coming straight from her long run on the popular TV series M*A*S*H stars as Grace Bradley, a small-town mother who is saddled with producing the annual church Christmas pageant when the perennial director quite literally breaks a leg. Young Beth Bradley is the wry narrator of Grace’s struggle to contend with the phoned-in advice of the bedridden director, and with he pandemonium caused by the six unruly Herdmans who descend upon the church (because they heard that refreshments were served) and demand the choice roles in the pageant. High marks for communicating the spirit of Christmas in an often hilarious tale.

And 3 Degrees of Austen?
1. Geraldine Page (A Christmas Memory) appeared in White Knights with Helen Mirren, who appeared in The Debt with Ciaran Hinds, Wentworth in the ’95 Persuasion.
Lisa Lucas (The House Without A Christmas Tree), appeared in An Unmarried Woman with Alan Bates; Bates appeared in Gosford Park with Tom Hollander, Mr. Collins in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.
James Woods (The Gift of Love) appeared in The General’s Daughter with James Cromwell, who played Reverend Austen in Becoming Jane.
John Houseman (A Christmas Without Snow) appeared in Ghost Story with Alice Krige, who was Lady Russell in the 2007 Persuasion.
Fairuza Balk (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever) appeared in Valmont with Colin Firth, 1995’s Mr. Darcy.

And which Austen characters would have enjoyed these films? A Christmas Memory would have appealed to the elderly Bates ladies, perhaps remembering their times with Jane Fairfax when Jane was a child; Eleanor Tilney and Anne Elliot may have sympathized with Addie Mills’ cheerless home life; Marianne Dashwood would have been carried away by A Gift of Love; Mrs. Dashwood would have sympathized with the main character in A Christmas Without Snow, who has lost husband and home, and Fanny Price may have seen something of the Herdmans in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever when she returned to Portsmouth and her gaggle of unruly siblings.

We have come to the time of year when sometime soon, some channel will run its 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon, and when many viewers – including yours truly – will devote a couple hours of a busy pre-Christmas season to watch it., and to reflect on the fact (or, at least, on my conviction) that this low-budget, nostalgic take on the Christmas season, released nearly 30 years ago, is the last genuine Christmas classic. There has been no shortage of attempts – Prancer, The Santa Clause, Elf, Four Christmases, Deck the Halls, remakes of Miracle on 34th Sreet and A Christmas Carol –and no shortage of star power, funding or promotion. Still, it seems easier to catch lighting in a bottle than to ignite the spark of Christmas spirit on the screen.

Too often, modern Christmas films fail to call up that Christmas spirit – a phrase in which “spirit” is as important as “Christmas”. Either they are anchored to the comic persona of the star – Jim Carrey as the Grinch, Bill Murray as Scrooge, Tim Allen as Santa – or the holiday becomes the backdrop for some dispiriting plight – divorce, abandonment, homelessness. Certainly these are realities of the human condition, but the choice to make them the underpinning of holiday entertainment, does tend to sap some of the magic from a flying reindeer, a drafted St. Nick., or an adopted elf. As an aside, I often think about this when shopping under the cloud of piped-in cotemporary “Christmas” music. You may walk into a mall savoring the spirit, of the season but a few lines of “Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” or “Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart” (“But the very next day, you gave it away”) is enough to, in the words of Elizabeth Bennet, “starve it entirely away”.

But I digress. A Christmas Story stands out among the slew of holiday films released in the last three decades because it manages to be whimsical but never affected, humorous but never vulgar, droll but never snarky. It is set in the 1940s, at a time when the expectations of Christmas were modest – Ralphie’s hope for a Red Ryder BB gun “with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time” – a reasonable, comprehensible and affordable wish – becomes an extravagance only in his imagination, and “you’ll shoot your eye out kid” becomes the refrain in a sequence of pre-Christmas episodes that merge Ralphie’s (and narrator Jean Shepherd’s) reminiscences with our own – whether our own are real, wished-for or apocryphal. A Christmas Story manages to distill from its commonplace events – shopping for and haggling over the perfect tree, the visit to the department-store Santa, even the ability to make the most of Plan B when Christmas dinner is devoured by the neighborhood dogs – a recollection of what our own Christmases were, or should have been.

Which Austen characters would have made time in their schedules for an annual viewing of A Christmas Story? I think it would have been especially appealing to parents who valued the conventions of family life – the Morlands, the Gardiners, Miss Bates and her mother and possibly Mrs. Jennings and Charlotte Palmer, if Mr. Palmer and his inevitable critiques could be gotten rid of.

And three degrees of Jane Austen? Tedde Moore (Ralphie’s teacher) appeared in Murder By Decree, playing Mrs. Lees to Donald Sutherland’s Robert Lees; Sutherland was Mr. Bennet in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty.”

I thought of this quote while watching a pair of biopics about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Often, their affair, which precipitated a constitutional crisis and the abdication of the throne, is treated with swoony romanticism, but the two films – Edward and Mrs. Simpson (1978) and Bertie and Elizabeth (2002) – were reminders that privilege is like fame: not everyone who receives it merits it, and that we should reserve our admiration for those who justify what they have been given with hard work, self-sacrifice and good character. To a great degree, both films effectively transfer the idealization of Edward and Mrs. Simpson, to the couple who had to undertake the responsibilities of the monarchy at the most demanding time in modern English history: the Duke of York, later King George VI and his wife, Elizabeth.

Bertie and Elizabeth is a rather conventional biopic about George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the subjects of the recent Oscar winner, The King’s Speech. The film has the weaknesses of the genre – in attempting to cover the broad expanse between the meeting of the young pair, through their early marriage, the abdication that elevated Bertie to the throne, the trials of war – it cannot spare a lot of time for character development, so it is remarkable how much humanity and dimension that James Wilby (Bertie), Alan Bates (George V), Eileen Atkins (Queen Mary) and especially Juliet Aubrey (Elizabeth) manage to convey.

Bertie and Elizabeth

Edward and Mrs. Simpson

Edward and Mrs. Simpson, a seven-part miniseries produced several years after Edward’s death, was co-written by the author of an Edward VIII biography, Frances Donaldson. It is a very unsentimental portrait of the pair; Edward (called David) is presented as something of an intellectual lightweight; he is unfamiliar with the book Mrs. Simpson is reading – Wuthering Heights – and asks who Emily “Bront” is. His royal duties are chores that interfere with his social life, and with his series of relationships with married women. The relationships are tolerated by his royal circle, but his devotion to Wallis, who becomes his constant companion and virtual hostess, are unsettling. “God send the prince a better companion,” remarks the Archbishop to George V, who replies, “God send the companion a better prince – then we’d soon be rid of her.” Their understanding of Wallis’ ambition is lost on Edward; toward him, she is subtly seductive and predatory, and thanks to Cynthia Harris’ brilliant performance, we understand (more clearly than it is put forth in any other rendering of the story) that she does not simply want to marry Edward, she fully expects to be Queen. In the telephone conversations that take place while she waits in France for him to deal with Parliament, her pleas that he not give in to pressure are clearly self-serving, and until the very last, Edward encourages the delusion: in Bertie and Elizabeth, tells Wallis on the phone that “We can get everything – Queen, Empress, the whole bag of tricks.”

The effort to craft a solution that will detach Wallis from Edward, and allow him to remain on the throne are just prolonged enough for him to understand the implications of choosing love – or at least a powerful infatuation – over duty, particularly since his countrymen sacrificed so much for England in the war (WWI). Edward and Mrs. Simpson does not portray their wedding as a joyous affair, but a small, rather somber ceremony, with the principals looking somber and almost regretful, in a way that called up a line from A Man For All Seasons, when Sir Thomas More reproaches a man who has contrived for gain: “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?” There is something “But for Wallis?” in the final glimpse of Edward Fox’s Edward.

But for Wallis?

And which Austen characters would have enjoyed these films? The emphasis on duty over passion would have appealed to Fanny Price, George Knightley, Elinor Dashwood, and the humane and good-natured manner in which Elizabeth took to the royal role that she never expected to assume would have been a lesson in civility that Darcy did come to learn from another Elizabeth.

And three degrees of Austen: Barbara Leigh-Hunt, who played Lady Mabel Airlie in Bertie and Elizabeth was Lady Catherine DeBourgh in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Edward Fox, Edward VIII in Edward and Mrs. Simpson was in the 2002 Nicholas Nickleby with Romola Garai, who starred in the 2009 Emma.