Other Doctor Lives: Elizabeth (1998, R)

I’ve seen this film before, but I’m revisiting it now for my Christopher Eccleston agenda. I’m not sure what it is—I’ve enjoyed my Other Doctor Lives forays into all the Doctors, including my pregame watches for Peter Capaldi and beyond—but for some reason, I get an extra little bit of joy seeing Eccleston be awesome in other projects.

After the death of King Henry VIII (and his son Edward VI,) his daughter Mary I becomes queen. As Mary’s health begins to fail, the Catholic queen’s abiding fear is that her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth will succeed her. When that’s exactly what happens, Catholic allies at court conspire against Elizabeth, dogging the young new queen’s every move. In order to make her mark on the throne, Elizabeth has to let all other desires be subsumed by it.

I am not up on my English monarchs, a fact I’ve admitted on multiple occasions, so I didn’t come to this film armed with the knowledge of how accurate it is. After I saw it for the first time, I looked up enough to confirm “not very.” So, with the understanding that it captures the overall feel and atmosphere of that era in England, and that it’s correct in the broad beats of Elizabeth’s early reign but takes a lot of license with the details, I enjoyed it as a movie if not as a history lesson.

When Elizabeth arrives at court, there are a few factors working against her. Again, she’s Protestant, which a lot of people virulently hate. Under Mary’s rule, Protestants were burned at the stake, and now the bishops are meant to accept a Protestant queen? She’s a woman, which is of course a problem for a lot of the men at court, and she’s unmarried, which makes it even worse in their eyes. Those who aren’t actively plotting to kill her are eager to marry her off as soon as possible—to gain a political alliance, to have a husband provide a tempering influence on Elizabeth, and to get her to pop out heirs and shore up the line of succession. And she doesn’t respect The Way Things Are Done. Aside from not placidly going along with her advisors’ marriage plans, she seeks the opinions of men who aren’t on her council, and she spends a great deal of time at court with her friend and lover, Robert Dudley. (Side note: reminder that I’m talking specifically about the film and not history, where Dudley’s precise relationship with Elizabeth isn’t known.)

Cate Blanchett earned her first Oscar nomination for this film, and it’s easy to see why. Elizabeth is thrown into an impossible situation that she’s ill-equipped for, and she handles it the best she can—sometimes hanging on for dear life, sometimes raging against the positions others put her in, sometimes clawing back her agency from everyone around her. She’s often unsure of her choices but plows ahead anyway, and it’s great to see the moments where she takes command and puts these tired men in their place. Additionally, there’s a real warmth and openness to Elizabeth for large parts of the film. Over the years, I feel like kind of an icy persona has built up around Blanchett and the characters she plays, and it’s good to see her playing something very different to that.

Joseph Fiennes plays Robert Dudley. This is actually one of two Elizabethan period pieces from 1998 in which he played the romantic lead, the other being Shakespeare in Love. While I prefer Fiennes in that film, he gets the job done well. The film also features appearances from James Frain, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Mortimer (seeing Bright Young Things alum in anything always makes me happy,) and Daniel Craig. Everyone is looking so young and lovely. Less happily, we also get Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham, one of Elizabeth’s few allies at court, and a ruthless one at that.

As for Eccleston, he has a prominent role here as the Duke of Norfolk, a prominent member of court and one of the chief forces opposing Elizabeth. He’s a shrewd character, openly showing allegiance in public while plotting in secret. The duke wants to keep Elizabeth under control until he’s able to get rid of her, and he’s not especially picky about how he might manage to do that.

Eccleston does a great job. The duke is intense and commanding, but in an understated way. He’s a very controlled man, and you can believe that Elizabeth might mistrust him but feel aggrieved that she has no concrete evidence as to why she does. He stays above reproach, keeping his voice level while his resentment seethes behind his eyes.

Accent Watch

RP. Again, very controlled, very “proper.”

Recommend?

In General – I would, provided you’re looking for entertainment and not a history lesson. This is a well-made film in which all elements work together to put forth the story it wants to tell.

Christopher Eccleston – Yes. Eccleston is excellent as the duke. It’s interesting to see how many darker characters have popped up for him on Other Doctor Lives. Nine was certainly edgier than most Doctors, but he’s also a character who radiates compassion and love. Seeing some of his past roles, it makes me all the more grateful that RTD looked at him and realized he could be an amazing Doctor.

Warnings

Violence (including religious executions,) sexual content, language (including sexist slurs,) drinking, and strong thematic elements.

Joel Fry-days: Drunk History: UK: Series 3, Episode 2 – “Murr and Jessica Knappett & Lydia Rose Bewley” (2017)

Okay, so this isn’t a full White Van Man situation where the pilot is “meh” and the second episode is fantastic, but this is a big improvement over episode 1. Although this one has a much smaller role for Joel Fry, it doesn’t have the same gross humor as the pilot, which is a relief.

Although, before I get started, a short airing of grievances: while there were other things I wanted to watch, like Fellow Travelers and the new Dexter shows, Joel Fry’s three episodes of Drunk History: UK were my primary reason for subscribing to Paramount+. After watching the pilot, I discovered that Paramount+ was missing two episodes of this series, one of which was this one. “Streaming rights issues,” apparently. Why would two episodes have different streaming rights than the rest of the show? No idea. Either way, I had to find this episode through alternate means, at which point I was so aggravated that I promptly decided to cancel my subscription, limiting myself to watching whatever I could fit in before my billing cycle ended. I don’t why, but tech issues make me so irrationally angry—I had to express my frustration in whatever limited way I could. Arghhhhhh!!!

Anyway…just two stories this time around. We learn about “John Tunstall & Billy the Kid” and “Elizabeth I & Mary Queen of Scots.”

James “Murr” Murray narrates the Billy the Kid story, telling us how he was hired to be the personal protection for shopkeeper John Tunstall and fought the local “cartel” throwing their weight around. There are amusing references to The Bodyguard, with Billy the Kid promising Tunstall, “I’m gonna be the best Kevin Costner you’ve ever had.” A lot of the humor in this drunken retelling comes from the American Murr’s difficulty with accents. Tunstall was British, and the story involves him feuding with a few Irish characters. Murr regularly starts their dialogue with an easy stock line to get him started—“Me Lucky Charms” for the Irishmen and “Pip, pip, cheerio!” for Tunstall—and he keeps up a running commentary on his accent struggles:

• “‘Hey!’ I can’t do an Irish accent. ‘Hey, mon!’ No, that’s Jamaican. Hold on, hold on….”
• “‘This is fucking nuts, man!’ It sounds Mexican, but it’s not.”

Jessica Knappett and Lydia Rose Bewley narrate the story of the two queens, which is where we see Joel Fry. I don’t think their tag team is as much fun as Murr’s—their narration is kind of mumbly, and they talk over each other a fair amount. But there’s still some fun stuff here. I like the observation that it was “a pretty frickin’ fit thing” for Elizabeth to be a virgin back in those days, and I chuckled at one of the narrators declaring Elizabeth was “a bloody prozzy, by which I mean Protestant!”

Joel Fry plays Gilbert Gifford, a honeypot who’s sent in by Elizabeth’s right-hand man to get incriminating evidence of Mary’s plans to overthrow her. He doesn’t appear until the tail end of the story, but this is very fun. Right from the start, he slides into Mary’s cell, proudly declaring, “Gilbert Gifforrrrrd!” with a double thumbs-up, hee! I get a kick out of how transparently Fry’s body language telegraphs that he’s a double agent. Gilbert segues straight from Mary complimenting his calves to stroking his beard as he asks, “But anyway, don’t you think you should be queen, though, Mary?”, and he turns to flash a grin at the camera while he’s getting the evidence he needs. I also really like how gingerly he sets Elizabeth’s inkwell on her desk so she can sign a decree.

As with the first episode, Fry’s talents lend themselves well to this kind of work. Even with only a few minutes of screentime, he delivers comedy, character, and plot movement with his lipsynced performance.

Y tu Luna también: Narcos: Mexico: Season 2, Episode 9 – “Growth, Prosperity, and Liberation” (2020)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

Penultimate episode time! All kinds of big stuff going down in this one.

The big day has arrived. Félix’s operation needs to go collect 70 tons of cocaine from Colombia and traffic it to the U.S., knowing full well that the Colombians will show no mercy if anything goes wrong. Speaking of which, Walt’s team knows about the shipment and decides that it’s the ideal time to strike—the prospect of catching the cartel with that much coke is mind-boggling.

The stakes are super high on all sides, so most of the episode is an all-but-literal countdown to the big clash. Will the DEA catch their white whale? Will Félix, Amado, and co. stay one step ahead? What will Calderoni, the DEA’s inside man, do to affect the outcome? The tension builds and builds until we reach the brutal climax.

Lots of interesting stuff for Félix today. As the big boss, he’s out of the direct line of fire while everything’s going down, but even if he’s not under the immediate threat of physical danger like some of his some of his men are, the mental weight of the whole operation is hanging heavily on them. Not only is he well aware of what Cali will do to him if he can’t pull this off, he’s staking everything on the success of this shipment. Even if the Colombians backed him into a corner to agree to it, he now needs to bring it home for his own sake, the ultimate power play.

As he does all this, Félix has also been trying to get closer with his ex-wife, María Elvira. He’s feeling nostalgic for the past, perhaps because he knows he’s dead if he fails, and maybe he’s trying to mend fences before it’s too late. The dynamic between them is interesting, because María Elvira knows exactly who Félix is and calls him out on his shit, even as she also starting to get pulled back in herself. Félix brings up his past transgressions, saying, “I haven’t forgotten what I did to you,” and she simply replies, “Neither have I.” He looks toward the future, pinning all his prospects on the success of the shipment, and says, “I’m almost there.” In response, she asks, “Where is ‘there’? And what happens when you arrive?”

As another bit of nostalgia, the episode opens on a flashback to the old days, before the series even started. We look back on a scene when Félix was still a cop, when life at home with his family was simple and Rafa was out in the greenhouse experimenting with sinsemilla. It’s wild to see Félix like this, and Diego Luna does a great job with it—his entire bearing is different.

It’s in stark contrast with his present, where he’s trying to convince María Elvira to give it another go while simultaneously having a harder grip on the cartel than ever before. When his judgement is questioned, he puts it plainly: “That’s right. You all rose with me. Without me, everyone is fucked.” We’ve watched Félix’s transformation so gradually over the course of the two seasons that it’s almost shocking to go back and see how he used to be. For Luna to play both radically different versions of the same character in a single episode is so effective.