The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel -- a Review

It is wonderful! It is marvelous. The costumes! The costumes are so Audrey Hepburn. The music is so Broadway. The street scenes are so New York! The humor! The humor is so funny! I love it!

The only caveat I have is that if you have tender ears, the language may be too coarse for you. But, then considering the current administration is also from New York, maybe it's just a sort of New York accent.

If, however, that is of no concern to you -- it is wonderful!

1958 New York City -- our vivacious, innocent (relatively,) enthusiastic heroine has graduated from Bryn Mawr, has been married to Mr. Right for four years, has two children (one of each,) and lives in a palatial apartment on NYC's Upper West Side (just a couple of floors down from her parents.) She follows the correct beauty regime, has the right kind of friends, is a wonderful cook, and is very supportive of her husband's dream to be a stand-up comedian.

What could go wrong?

Oh, my goodness. I want to tell you so bad. But I have this thing about spoilers. Suffice it to say, everything that goes wrong is surprising and great material for a stand-up comedy routine. And I don't mean HIS. Kudos to the creator and writer Amy Sherman-Palladino along with Daniel Palladino.

Rachel Brosnahan is our Miriam "Midge" Maisel. She's already received a Critics' Choice Award and The Golden Globe as Best Actress for her performance in the series. And she is perfect.

You will be forgiven if you alternate between remembering Audrey Hepburn and Marlo Thomas's That Girl. Add a dash of Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman and a great dollop of Joan Rivers and you've got The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

There are even shadows of Downton Abbey -- The Weissmans (Midge's parents -- he's a professor at Columbia and she's a doyenne) did not raise their daughter to work!



Is she an exaggeration? I don't know. Maybe. Probably. But I do remember that my own mother did not grow up expecting to work outside the home. And, although we lived in a very small town in the middle of a fly-over state, she always dressed to go into The City. That meant hat, gloves, and matching bag and shoes.

Oh and the characters around the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel! The most perfectly WRONG kind of friends.

First and foremost Susie, played by Alex Borstein, who does not live on the Upper West Side, didn't go to Bryn Mawr, and who grew up in a family that didn't give a damn what she did. But Susie gets Midge. She recognizes talent when she sees it. She can imagine a STAR.

Borstein was nominated for a Critics Choice Award as Best Supporting Actress.


And Lenny Bruce! Yes, THE Lenny Bruce.

When I asked my daughter Grace and her friend if they knew who Lenny Bruce was. That drew blank looks.

"Was he a writer?" she asked.

Books and writers. Bookstores and libraries. These are the things that I've raised my children with.

"No!" I said. "He was a comedian!"

She and her friend Spencer broke into the lyric from Rent's La Vie Boheme, "Lenny Bruce. Langston Hughes. To the stage!"

That got a blank look from me. I have seen Rent and I do like it. But I don't know the lyrics, for heaven's sake.

Spencer immediately googled Lenny Bruce on their phone. "He was prosecuted and convicted for obscenity."

"Yes! Yes! That was him," I cried. "A comedian."

They had no idea.

"You probably don't even know who Bella Abzug was, do you?" I accused. "Feminist? Congress Woman from New York?"

"No but we know who Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan were," they responded.

 At least that's something. However, none of these women have anything to do with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

I did suggest that perhaps Grace and Spencer were not old enough to enjoy the series.

Grace pointed out "You enjoy Downton Abbey and you're not that old."

Well, that did rather burst my bubble. Having spent my fervor, I admitted a couple of anachronisms that a good editor would have caught. Things that should not have been in the scripts because they didn't exist yet. Keeping in mind the story is set in 1958. There were musical nods to later Rock and Roll.

And "Midge mentions 'pantyhose' which we didn't start wearing until the mid-60s," I said.

Blank looks.

"Remember girdles and garter belts?" I asked.

More blank looks.

Maybe not as old as Downton Abbey, but oh my. When did I get this old?

Never mind.

Watch it with Google close at hand. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is available on Amazon Prime.

P.S. The second season starts filming in March. (Filming? They probably don't use film anymore. "Starts production" I should say to cover whatever it is they do these days.)

The Lincoln Letter and Mercy Street -- A conjoined review

                  

Now you know. I spend all my time reading and watching television. NOT! But I do enjoy reading and watching television.

A peculiar synchronicity brought the American Civil War into my book/TV life this week.

I made a commitment to PBS to watch their original series Mercy Street and respond to a survey after each episode. And I've been watching Mercy Street since its January premiere.

I hate making commitments! Things always come up. Family responsibilities, electronic difficulties, bedtime. But I only missed episode 4.

Mercy Street which explores the American Civil War is set in occupied Alexandria, Virginia, which is across the Potomac River and about eight miles downstream from Washington, D.C.

The story, based on the real Mary Phinney's diaries, is told primarily from the points of view of two volunteer nurses.

Nurse Mary is a Massachusetts born abolitionist, volunteer in the Union Army Hospital.

Miss Emma Green was also a real woman, the daughter of the Southern family who owned the hotel, commandeered by the Union forces as a military hospital. Her real-life love-interest Frank was well and truly a Confederate spy just as he is in this production.

The initial intransigence of the women from opposite sides in the war is well-played, as is their gradual softening toward each other and the soldiers from the side opposite their own.

A secondary, but especially riveting, plot line involves Samuel Diggs, a free black man raised in the home of a Pennsylvania doctor where he learned medicine. Knowledge he could not publicly display in a Civil War era hospital -- Union or Confederate.

The production is graphic in its portrayal of medical procedures common to the Civil War era. And in its portrayal of a boorish white man's abuse of a nominally free black woman. Maybe too graphic.

But the portrayal of the lead characters and most of the supporting characters is very well done. A bright spot in American dramatic television. As a long-time, enthusiastic supporter of British dramatic series (Upstairs, Downstairs; I, Claudius; Silent Witness; Downton Abbey; Call the Midwife; etc.) I find it reassuring that Americans can produce good TV dramas, too.

Synchronicity, did I say? Yes, I did.

I bought The Lincoln Letter last fall while attending the Rose State Writing Short Course. William Martin was the guest lecturer there and he very kindly autographed my copy. It had been sitting on my bedside table since.

When I finished Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning (see my review) and needed something much less intense to read -- there it was, right at hand.

The Lincoln Letter is not exactly a murder mystery. It is a mystery and there are murders. But, for the most part, the who-done-it is openly acknowledged in most of the murders. And in the murders involving murderers not initially clearly identified, it's not really important. The mystery is more about an unnamed item mentioned in the Lincoln letter.

The fifth in Martin's Peter Fallon series, The Lincoln Letter intersperses historical fiction with current day action. Peter Fallon is an antique books and historical documents dealer. He's the current day main character chasing the 'it' worth several million dollars.

Halsey Hutchinson (the historical part's main character) is a Union Lieutenant working in the War Department's telegraph office. President Lincoln, during his insomniac wanderings, develops a friendly relationship with Halsey. During a series of misadventures Halsey loses then tries to recover the possible 'it.'

This mixture of historical and modern day stories has been done many times before. As with James Michener's superior novels, I found myself more interested in the historical fiction part -- I hurried through the modern day passages, wishing Martin had just skipped Peter Fallon's part altogether.

I give Mercy Street four and a half stars. Three stars to William Martin's The Lincoln Letter.