Other Doctor Lives: Casanova: Episode 2 (2005)

 

IMDb lists this miniseries as three hour-long episodes and Amazon Prime offers it as a three-hour TV movie, but I wonder if it actually might’ve been made for two hour-and-a-half-long episodes. Because where there wasn’t a neat break where I decided to after after hour one last week, it does feel like there’s more of a break in the middle of the second hour. At this point, I’m just going to keep going with splitting it into thirds, but it makes today’s installment feel less cohesive.

Despite Casanova’s wide-ranging sexual exploits, he keeps coming back to Henriette. The witty, street-wise woman is likewise drawn to him, but as a former gutter rat who’s vowed never to know that poverty again, she’s engaged to an unexciting, possessive Venetian for his money. Casanova hopes to earn enough to offer the security to be with her, but Gramani, Henriette’s fiancée, isn’t about to see a social-climbing nobody like Casanova “take” what’s “his.”

I don’t enjoy this quite as much as I did the first hour, but again, I think a lot of that is that it feels less cohesive. I’m not much of a binger, so I usually prefer to watch serialized stuff in individual episodes and it annoys me when platforms don’t give an option of viewing miniseries that way. As such, I guessed here and most likely guessed wrong, since this episode feels more like a hodgepodge of a few different parts of Casanova’s story ending/beginning, so it doesn’t flow as well.

That said, there’s still a lot to enjoy here. There’s a fun, snappy scene of Casanova trying to make himself the toast of Parisian society, I like the recurring gag of him attempting to impress a new character introduced here, and of course a scene of him giving confession is everything you’d expect it to be. The bits with the older Casanova and Edith continue to be good.

The best parts, for me, are probably the scenes between Casanova and Henriette. Even though the basics of the story are the very definition of “been there, done that” – poor but romantic guy has instant chemistry with a woman and they totally get each other, but she’s engaged to a rich jerk – but David Tennant and Laura Fraser just play off of each other beautifully. Furthermore, we see plenty of glimpses for why these two like each other beyond just both of them being attractive. In all these party scenes, we see them finding each other, exchanging repartee and sparks, and all the while, each really understands the other.

I also enjoy the scenes between Casanova and his servant/partner-in-crime Rocco. As a character, Rocco feels a little underwritten, but Shaun Parkes has a good give-and-take with Tennant, and I like seeing how Rocco becomes invested in Casanova beyond just what Casanova can offer him. It’ll be fun the next time I rewatch “The Impossible Planet” / “The Satan Pit” from new Who, to remember Tennant and Parkes here as I revisit their performances there.