Oh, BBC Periods Dramas

So, I had had to go back to work in the middle of this week (that's right, I have a job), and to console myself after two whole days (okay, one and a half) of working with noisy kids, I watched YouTube clips of period dramas all afternoon. Nothing puts me in better spirits than nuanced dialogue and stiff, emotionally-closed men in lacy collars. For realsies. Por ejemplo:



"Poor, plain, obscure and little!" Oh, Jane Eyre, stop being so self-deprecating, he loves you!* Mmm, Mr. Rochester, I love it when you break through that cold façade and tell us how you really feel. Too bad your crazy wife is still locked in the attic and when Jane finds out she's going to run away and get amnesia and almost marry a crazy missionary (spoiler alert!). But it's classic British literature, so they'll make it somehow, even if that somehow is with Mr. Rochester all maimed and blind.

I watched a lot of Bleak House clips, too (starring hot, hot Gillian Anderson). My WIGgy friend Lauren and I went on a period drama binge this summer, and I think those were two of our faves. It started innocently enough on Netflix, but then we just stopped waiting for the next disc in the four-part series of (fill in the blank) to come in the mail and took to renting/watching four to five hours of witty bantor and parlor games at a time. The summer came to a tragic end when, long after I had cancelled my Netflix subscription, our local independent video store closed. By that time we were both moving, though, so it didn't matter much.

Wow, that was a bit more naustalgia than I was aiming for. A word to the wise though, the contemporary BBC dramas suck! by comparison. Apparently I've erased the name of the one we watched from my mind, and even 30 minutes of googling didn't get me anywhere, but it's probably for the best. We watched ALL FOUR discs of this terrible series (c. 1993?) about this doctor who "falls in love" with the older woman who hires him at the hospital when he has to go home to take care of his father. But get this, at first they hate each other! And, she's married! Maybe we were drunk, I don't know, but at least we didn't rent the sequel (disc 5). I'll take Mr. Jarndyce or Lady Dedlock over that shit any day.

*Also, look at how they kiss! It's hilarious, and this is how they do it throughout the entire film (okay, until they make out in the grass way later...) Like real lip to lip contact would just be too much, they just slide right past it.