Peter Wimsey on the screen

[swan_tower]

Lately I've been working my way through the old TV adaptations of the Peter Wimsey mysteries, both the Ian Carmichael ones (most of the books that don't have Harriet Vane, leaving out Whose Body? and Unnatural Death) and the Edward Petherbridge ones (most of the books that do have Harriet Vane, leaving out Busman's Honeymoon).

The folklorist in me is generally fascinated to see adaptations and to compare different adaptations against one another. In this case the two sets of miniseries are working with different texts, but it's still possible to compare them more broadly. Edward Petherbridge struck me as a touch too muted for how I imagine Peter's dialogue and behavior, but he's a vastly better physical match than Ian Carmichael. By contrast, I think Petherbridge's Bunter (Richard Morant) seems far too young? He looks like he would have been about twelve in World War II, though Wikipedia tells me he was nearly forty at the time of filming. He also doesn't quite manage Bunter's self-effacing manner the way Glyn Houston does with Carmichael -- and while I sort of like the character visibly having a mind of his own, it didn't quite feel like Bunter to me.

(I do wonder if Petherbridge was incapable of horseback riding, or at least of bareback riding, since they gave that bit of Have His Carcase to Bunter instead of Peter. Or maybe they just wanted Bunter to have a chance to show off.)

There's no doing comparisons on Harriet Vane, since she's only in one set of the miniseries, but I liked her quite a bit. I would have liked to see those books get four episodes, though, the way the Carmichael ones generally did; three felt cramped, especially on Gaudy Night -- not surprising, given that's by far the longest of the novels. Mind you, I wonder what a modern adaptation could do with three episodes, since our approach to pacing is a good deal faster than it was in 1987. How much more of the story could you have fit in if not as much time was spent on a character coming into a room, setting down their things, walking across the room, etc?

I wasn't watching these shows super closely; they were serving as background entertainment while I did things like sort papers for taxes, since I remember the plots well enough not to get lost if I wasn't paying close attention. Between that and my less-than-perfect recall of said plots, though, I can't say a great deal about the adaptations on that front -- I welcome thoughts from those of you who have seen these! The only thing that truly jumped out at me as a flaw, because I had re-read that section not long before, was the very end of Gaudy Night. They shaved down Peter's conversation with Harriet much too far, I think, transforming the culmination of their romance into merely "Harriet gets over her hangups." Gone is Peter's apology for his earlier behavior, where I can never help but wonder if it doubles as Sayers meta-textually exhibiting hindsight on her own authorial choices: it would not surprise me in the least if she wrote Strong Poison thinking she had a great setup, then got to Have His Carcase and realized she couldn't steer them toward a HEA with the situation she'd created for them, then had to write Gaudy Night (in which Peter barely even appears) before she could untangle her own narrative knot. Maybe not; maybe she always planned for them to travel that long and thorny of a path. But Writer Brain can absolutely imagine her painting herself into a corner and then having to paint a way out. And if so, I don't mind: it produced a much more interesting result than a more conventional romance -- the latter being more what the adaptation gave us.

But like I said, thoughts welcomed from those of you who have watched any of these!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/828nc1)

Comments

[sovay]

(I do wonder if Petherbridge was incapable of horseback riding, or at least of bareback riding, since they gave that bit of Have His Carcase to Bunter instead of Peter. Or maybe they just wanted Bunter to have a chance to show off.)

Petherbridge was not incapable of horseback riding and discusses that scene in his memoir Slim Chances and Unscheduled Appearances (2010):

"I do not forgive myself in that second adaptation for merely complaining and actually submitting to the appalling 'beef-up Bunter' idea that came from God knows where, but suddenly arrived ready-scripted one day. Richard Morant's Bunter, rather than Wimsey, was to ride the horse bareback over the sands at Wilvercombe. I know there are lots of people who love the books, or have come to know them well, through the television series, and so it may be worth explaining this particularly wrong-headed corruption of the original for those aficionados. There is a pivotal moment on the sands with Wimsey and the horse when Harriet suddenly sees Peter as the archetypal shining knight:

"'Harriet was silent. She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamored, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realized that there was, after all, something god-like about him. He could control a horse.'

"We gave absolutely no trace of this crucial turning point in Harriet's perception of Peter.

"It was suggested by the director Chris Hodson, fibbing to me in a hotel corridor in the West Country, where I challenged him about the script, that, as I had only the tamest equestrian experience, I would not like the alternative – to be exposed to ridicule on the public beach astride a mechanical hobby horse when filming the close shots. I assumed, rightly, that it was standard practice to have bareback riding in long shot done by an expert stunt rider. I did have a previous experience one early misty morning, in the filming of M. R. James' The Ash Tree, of seeing from a distance my stuntman thrown by a horse and, as the creature was being brought back, hearing the director's voice clearly in the still, damp air say, 'Don't tell Edward.' In my scene that evening on the same horse, I had to ride past some Elizabethan windows carrying a flaming torch whilst banging with a stick on the shutters. I was foolhardy enough to do it out of sheer masculine pride. The horse behaved perfectly and I felt like a hero in a costume drama, which is what I was supposed to be.

"When our stuntman in Have His Carcase had completed the long beach ride in long shot and the sands were deserted, Richard, wearing a raincoat and apparently no better qualified than I, mounted a mechanical hobby horse for the close shot. In order to look like a convincing shining knight, I would have mounted that contraption on the beach at Blackpool on August Bank Holiday amongst jeering crowds (who could have been digitally removed in post production). What I suppose I couldn't ultimately bring myself to do in this instance was dig in my heels and snatch back Wimsey's rightful heroic sequence from my colleague. In a funny way I was too proud to do that, because it would have felt like an actor's pettiness. I did insist, however, that Bunter and I should toss a coin to see who would undertake the ride down the beach, so there should be no doubt that both characters were capable. I then concentrated on somehow keeping my heroic credentials in place during the scene of waiting for Bunter to appear. The line, 'There rides the man who fills my hot-water bottle and cooks like Escoffier', is my own creation – no credit or extra fee for 'additional dialogue', mind you. My advice to anyone in the same situation would be: bugger all that, phone the agent, argue artistic differences, defend the original author's intentions, walk out and speak to the press (good publicity), come to blows if necessary, be unpopular, but ride that bloody horse!"

Petherbridge also addresses the crunched pace of Gaudy Night:

"Achieving the 'definitive' Wimsey was sometimes a struggle in the midst of all the approximations and impurities. I must, however, pay tribute to so many felicitous production touches: those wonderful lady dons; a host of supporting character studies, many of them excellent; innumerable design triumphs; a perfect score by Joseph Horovitz, a name to inspire musical confidence; my suits alone, 'shoulders tailored to swooning-point'. Irrespective of these touches, I soon found it necessary to cast myself in the role of purist policeman, insisting that the TV audience, like the reader, should have all the clues. Harriet Walter and I managed to insist on the deciphering business in the last minutes of Have His Carcase; we thought the detail of it was quintessential whodunit stuff and exciting as a cerebral game. More importantly, as soon as I saw the script of the last episode of Gaudy Night, I declared, in league with Harriet, that this was un-actable and that we wouldn't act it unless the proposal to Harriet Vane and her acceptance were not a perfunctory two-line incident halfway through it, but, as in the book, the climactic final sequence.

"On our last day in Oxford, our sympathetic but harried director was off on various quests, our producer was mysteriously in London, whilst Harriet Walter and I found ourselves in one of those curious lumber rooms that always manifest themselves on locations, however elegant, being repositories for everything and anything that must be got out of shot. We were in a room just off the beautiful colonnade of Corpus Christi College in which the proposal was to take place. In amongst a clutter of furniture and rolled-up carpets, we conferred and pored over the novel's immensely long build-up to the proposal and its acceptance, both in Latin. We hastily re-drafted our final exchange, necessarily pithy and all of it in English. Michael Simpson would breeze in at junctures, casting doubts and leaving counter-suggestions, buzz off again as the clock ticked nearer to the moment that afternoon when we should have to commit our fresh dialogue to memory, rehearse it and get it in the can. All of Sayers' marvellously photogenic stuff on the roof of the Radcliffe Camera was lost (too expensive, I suppose), the winking traffic lights, the agonizingly romantic stretching of the dénouement, which I'd loved on first reading but afterwards found emotionally and philosophically convoluted, as exotic and indulgent as an overplanted hothouse. We didn't manage to get in everything we wanted to and, when it came to it, the length of the colonnade, down which we strolled, dictated the pace and essence of the scene. The scene was about walking on eggshells, culminating in the golden egg.

"Retrospectively, I can understand Michael Chapman's urge to get out the secateurs and prune things a bit, but it was Gaudy Night that suffered most at his hands. He never tired of proclaiming that the first thing he did when taking on the project (which had already been developed to some degree by someone else) was to reduce Gaudy Night from four episodes to three, even though it is the longest and densest of the three novels we adapted and arguably the best. In a ridiculous bid not to give the ending away, the character of the culprit was crudely marginalized, although the actress Lavinia Bertram does very well indeed with what there is.

"It was the idea of being involved with a ladies' college for several weeks that set our producer's teeth on edge and he made sure we didn't film at Somerville College (Sayers' alma mater); Corpus Christi, founded in 1517, is, of course, one of the 'ancient', traditionally male colleges. Yet the female cast was Gaudy Night's great strength. We had a very good ensemble of lady dons; they held a reunion or two for a time, one of which I was invited to [. . .] They all made up, to some degree, for the plot being oversimplified."

The books were new to him when he was cast, but he fell in love with them, and Harriet Walter—whom I love as Harriet Vane—was also a fan. I appreciate their fight and wish they had won a fourth episode for Gaudy Night. I'd have loved their Busman's Honeymoon, while we're dreaming.

[swan_tower]

I am not surprised in the slightest that you have no only seen these, but have useful citations to hand! In fact, the hope of that was part of what motivated me to actually get off my duff and write this entry.

Petherbridge was not incapable of horseback riding and discusses that scene in his memoir

Ah, interesting! I hadn't been sure it was a stunt rider in the long shots, as a pirated YouTube copy of 1987 film resolution supplemented whatever they did to make it not obviously a stunt rider, hence leaving open the theory that Morant was just a really great rider and they wanted to use that. Poor Petherbridge. I like that he didn't object because he didn't want to be a dick to a colleague, and I'm also not sure how well that scene could communicate what is in the book a very internal moment for Harriet, but all in all, there was no good reason for changing it. (Though I do like Bunter's expression when he's told the ride has to be bareback.)

we wouldn't act it unless the proposal to Harriet Vane and her acceptance were not a perfunctory two-line incident halfway through it, but, as in the book, the climactic final sequence

Oh, hell yes. The mystery in that book is engine for and commentary on the romance, not the other way around.

In a ridiculous bid not to give the ending away, the character of the culprit was crudely marginalized, although the actress Lavinia Bertram does very well indeed with what there is.

TV does have the advantage over a book of being able to stick Annie in the background of other people's conversations, but yeah, she hardly appears in the story apart from background inclusion. I also felt the editing was at one point very clumsily manipulative -- the speed with which it cuts from Harriet attacked to Annie in the cellar to Miss de Vine finding Harriet in a way clearly meant to make you think she was the one who attacked her -- all the more clumsy for the fact that the script doesn't do anything with that misdirection; you get that shot purely for audience suspicion, and there's no follow-on in the story.

I did like the female dons. Conventional wisdom of adaptation offers good arguments for reducing their number, at least those with speaking roles, but I appreciated the feeling that yes, there's a community here, and its members are not known for keeping their thoughts to themselves.

I appreciate their fight and wish they had won a fourth episode for Gaudy Night.

I would pay cash money to see the scenes where Peter scientifically strangles Harriet for her self-defense education and then buys her an entirely non-sexual dog collar. Also the paired bits in the punting where Peter gets called out for his undergraduate arrogance and then Miss Schuster-Slattery (I think that's her name?) goes floating away with "isn't he just the perfect English aristocrat?" and Peter has hysterics -- though that latter bit is, admittedly, the kind of thing you'd be justified in trimming so as to fit the book into the space available.

I'd have loved their Busman's Honeymoon, while we're dreaming.

That's a tough one in a variety of ways, starting with the difficulty of conveying all the delightfully different views of Peter and his marriage that you get through the opening letters and the Dowager's diary. (Helen. So clueless.) But more than that, I think for Honeymoon to work for me on the screen, previous installments would have needed to properly establish the thing that's basically been left out in existing adaptations, which is Peter's deep sense of conflict and psychological trauma over knowing he's sending killers to the gallows. Without that, where's your ending?

[sovay]

I am not surprised in the slightest that you have no only seen these, but have useful citations to hand! In fact, the hope of that was part of what motivated me to actually get off my duff and write this entry.

Hooray!

I actually saw them somewhat late for my cohort, in that I read all of my Sayers for the first time in high school and was on the other side of grad school for any of the television versions. I bounced completely off Carmichael. I did like Petherbridge very much, although I would not imprint on the actor until the RSC's 1982 The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. My ideal casting remains Leslie Howard and at least I got icons out of it.

and I'm also not sure how well that scene could communicate what is in the book a very internal moment for Harriet

I think it could have been done with the cinematography—I have actually seen something equivalent in a modern film, where even as the lighting and the acting and the rest of the mise-en-scène remain naturalistically low-key, a character suddenly looks like a goddamn romance novel come to life right in front of our eyes—and with Harriet's reactions, which wouldn't need to be big, either, just enough to confirm recognition: when you see something someone you never did before, whether it's a physical ability or an attraction you have to acknowledge.

Oh, hell yes. The mystery in that book is engine for and commentary on the romance, not the other way around.

It's so beautifully paralled all through it, though. I hope someone teaches that book.

I also felt the editing was at one point very clumsily manipulative -- the speed with which it cuts from Harriet attacked to Annie in the cellar to Miss de Vine finding Harriet in a way clearly meant to make you think she was the one who attacked her -- all the more clumsy for the fact that the script doesn't do anything with that misdirection; you get that shot purely for audience suspicion, and there's no follow-on in the story.

I'm glad you can make these observations: I haven't seen the adaptations recently enough to remember things like the editing.

I would pay cash money to see the scenes where Peter scientifically strangles Harriet for her self-defense education and then buys her an entirely non-sexual dog collar.

Yes. I can't even remember if the adaptation had room for Saint-George. I don't think it did.

Also the paired bits in the punting where Peter gets called out for his undergraduate arrogance

"The moment I heard those arrogant, off-hand, go-to-blazes tones I said, 'Wimsey of Balliol.' Wasn't I right?"

and then Miss Schuster-Slattery (I think that's her name?) goes floating away with "isn't he just the perfect English aristocrat?" and Peter has hysterics -- though that latter bit is, admittedly, the kind of thing you'd be justified in trimming so as to fit the book into the space available.

I know, but it's so wonderful.

That's a tough one in a variety of ways, starting with the difficulty of conveying all the delightfully different views of Peter and his marriage that you get through the opening letters and the Dowager's diary. (Helen. So clueless.)

It has the advantage of existing in the original stage version, though, co-written by Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne, which could have been deepened with material from the book it was effectively novelized into.

But more than that, I think for Honeymoon to work for me on the screen, previous installments would have needed to properly establish the thing that's basically been left out in existing adaptations, which is Peter's deep sense of conflict and psychological trauma over knowing he's sending killers to the gallows. Without that, where's your ending?

The TV versions gave them absolutely no help in the build-up, but I would have trusted the actors—specifically these two—to pull it off emotionally even starting from scratch.

[swan_tower]

I actually saw them somewhat late for my cohort, in that I read all of my Sayers for the first time in high school and was on the other side of grad school for any of the television versions.

I'm pretty sure I didn't read the books until after grad school, and (obviously) just watched the adaptations now.

I bounced completely off Carmichael.

Yeah, he just . . . doesn't work for me, except in the one aspect of being a little bit less restrained than Petherbridge, in a way that I think is appropriate for the character. I particularly did not buy his interactions with Dian de Momerie -- which, in fairness to him, I'm not sure I entirely buy his interactions with her in the book, and I know Sayers said afterward that she didn't feel she'd done a very good job writing the entire drug angle in that novel. But Carmichael was definitely the wrong actor to sell me on that material.

I think it could have been done with the cinematography

I reflexively assume the 1987 approach to that would have been crashingly unsubtle, but perhaps I'm being unfair.

I'm glad you can make these observations: I haven't seen the adaptations recently enough to remember things like the editing.

I'm usually not good at observations about things like the editing, so I'm pleased with myself for having made this one.

I can't even remember if the adaptation had room for Saint-George. I don't think it did.

Not a hair of him. I can see why; if you're looking to make reductions, that's an easy one to go for. But again, it has the effect of flattening out some really important things about the romance: Saint-George is one of the key elements in the thread of Harriet coming to view Peter as a whole human being, family warts and all. I was spot re-reading bits of Gaudy Night in between episodes of the miniseries, and I really love the scene where Harriet's trying to write a cover letter for Saint-George's note to Peter, wrestling with the awareness that she has just tripped and fallen into matters he would almost certainly prefer her not to have seen.

It has the advantage of existing in the original stage version, though

Oh, right! I had forgotten it began that way. That's very helpful, yes.

[sovay]

I'm pretty sure I didn't read the books until after grad school, and (obviously) just watched the adaptations now.

I appreciate the data point/reality check. Everyone around me seemed to have already seen the TV adaptations and expected me to have opinions by the time I heard about them.

Yeah, he just . . . doesn't work for me, except in the one aspect of being a little bit less restrained than Petherbridge, in a way that I think is appropriate for the character.

I enjoyed him the 1975 BBC Radio The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club that I listened to two years ago. I was pleasantly surprised.

But Carmichael was definitely the wrong actor to sell me on that material.

Petherbridge has a lot of harlequin in his overall persona. That said, the problem with that part of the plot in Murder Must Advertise is that it should break into the supernatural and instead there's just a murder and some arrests.

I reflexively assume the 1987 approach to that would have been crashingly unsubtle, but perhaps I'm being unfair.

I don't know if this set of adaptations could have done it. I don't doubt it could have been done in 1987. A movie like A Month in the County exists almost entirely between people's gazes and it isn't crashing in the least.

I'm usually not good at observations about things like the editing, so I'm pleased with myself for having made this one.

That's really neat. Maybe you're building an eye for it.

I was spot re-reading bits of Gaudy Night in between episodes of the miniseries

That feels both potentially frustrating and a good way to supplement its gaps.

Oh, right! I had forgotten it began that way. That's very helpful, yes.

I've never seen a production. I'd really like to. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the American film.

[swan_tower]

That said, the problem with that part of the plot in Murder Must Advertise is that it should break into the supernatural and instead there's just a murder and some arrests.

I'm curious what you mean by that -- I don't remember the specifics of the plot well enough, apart from what got included in the adaptation, to know.

I don't know if this set of adaptations could have done it. I don't doubt it could have been done in 1987.

You have seen more and better of the cinema of that era, so I trust you they could have done it!

exists almost entirely between people's gazes

This makes me think of Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice somehow managing to achieve the most expressive expressionlessness I have ever personally witnessed.

I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the American film.

I didn't know there was one, and given your implied comment on it, I will jettison the information from my brain forthwith.

[whimsyful]

it would not surprise me in the least if she wrote Strong Poison thinking she had a great setup, then got to Have His Carcase and realized she couldn't steer them toward a HEA with the situation she'd created for them, then had to write Gaudy Night (in which Peter barely even appears) before she could untangle her own narrative knot.

That's basically exactly what happened! Sayers goes over it in detail in this essay on how she couldn't make herself go through with the originally planned conventional romance because the characters had become too real for her:

I could not marry Peter off to the young woman he had (in the conventional Perseus manner) rescued from death and infamy, because I could find no form of words in which she could accept him without loss of self-respect. I had landed my two chief puppets in a situation where, according to all the conventional rules of detective fiction, they should have had nothing to do but fall into one another’s arms; but they would not do it, and that for a very good reason. When I looked at the situation I saw that it was in every respect false and degrading; and the puppets had somehow got just so much flesh and blood in them that I could not force them to accept it without shocking myself.

[swan_tower]

My instincts are vindicated! Seriously, Have His Carcase reads to me like Sayers trying to drag two incredibly fractious horses toward some drinking water, before she throws her hands in the air and says "fine, I'll have to figure out a way to make you actually thirsty." And the result is an incredibly odd and delightful book where she sidelines her hero and doesn't have a murder and just breaks all the rules of continuing on with your murder mystery series.

[moon_custafer]

The line, 'There rides the man who fills my hot-water bottle and cooks like Escoffier', is my own creation – no credit or extra fee for 'additional dialogue', mind you.

God I love this man.

In amongst a clutter of furniture and rolled-up carpets, we conferred and pored over the novel's immensely long build-up to the proposal and its acceptance, both in Latin. We hastily re-drafted our final exchange, necessarily pithy and all of it in English. Michael Simpson would breeze in at junctures, casting doubts and leaving counter-suggestions, buzz off again as the clock ticked nearer to the moment that afternoon when we should have to commit our fresh dialogue to memory, rehearse it and get it in the can.

And that is why you need actors who *aren’t* cattle.

I'd have loved their Busman's Honeymoon, while we're dreaming.

I’d love to see that gold, Elizabethan-inspired wedding dress. Also I suppose a tv adaptation would have left out Harriet’s encounter with the family ghost, but as you said, we’re dreaming.

[swan_tower]

And that is why you need actors who *aren’t* cattle.

Agreed, though in other cases I'm a little dubious of actors deciding they know better than the writers what their dialogue should be. Some of them are right; many of them are not.

[starlady]

I see sovay has the citations up-thread but I actually think that the adaptation of Gaudy Night is quite bad, definitely the worst of the Petherbridge efforts -- they screw up the murderer plot, they cack-handedly set the story five years earlier and thus mess up the thematic stuff with the Nazis (which ties into the murder plot, except that they'd done it wrong so there goes that resonance), and of course the romance is done wrong too. The only thing that saves it is the actors, who of course are great.

I haven't seen any of the 70s movies but I should. I sometimes feel like one of the few people who likes the whole Wimsey series, not just the Vane novels -- so many people apparently only read those ones and they're missing some really great books, plus Peter's really excellent character development!

[swan_tower]

Ah, I totally missed it being set that much earlier. The parts of it I liked were the parts where I could see it drawing directly from the book; having it on in the background made it easier to miss how awkward a patchwork those made.

You should see the Carmichael ones, too, and then report on what you think of them! I'd be very curious. I don't like all of the non-Harriet novels, but the adaptation skipped most of the ones I care less about -- the exception being The Five Red Herrings. I was interested to see whether TV adaptation could make all the stuff with train schedules less tedious, and the answer is, not so much. (However, the spinster pair who may or may not have been as blatantly coded as lesbians in the book are delightful and steal the few scenes they're in.)

[carbonel]

Several years ago (fewer than 20, probably more than 10), I watched all the Wimsey adaptations in book-publication order -- which made an odd mix of Petherbridge and Carmichael. I enjoyed them for what they were, but haven't been tempted to go back to them. Which is just as well, I suppose, since I watched them via the Netflix DVD service that was shut down last year.

[swan_tower]

I don't see myself being compelled to re-watch any of them, no. A few scattered scenes here and there, maybe.