Rosemary and Thyme

I mentioned recently that Netflix, in its attempt to focus my attention solely on those of its offerings it feels would appeal to me, has created several categories of television shows and movies to capture my attention. They often seem remarkably specialized, as when it collects together Goofy Musicals or 1970s Sitcoms with a Strong Female Lead. Sometimes, it seems almost a little too specialized, as when the service offers up Campy Comedies Featuring Cross-Dressing Stars, or Cerebral Dramas with Exquisite Cinematography Set on Wind-Swept Moors and Cast with Actors Sporting Impenetrable Accents.

And then other times, it'll gather up Hot in Cleveland and Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas and Xena: Warrior Princess and old episodes of Top Chef and lump them in a category called Aw, Who the Hell Are We Kidding? We Know You'll Watch Anything.

But Netflix does seem to have glommed onto the fact that my favorite of these categories it creates is a little something called Holy Crap Even Gwyneth Paltrow Speaking with a British Accent Will Get You Going, Won't It, You Bloody Anglophile? After my excursion into bodice-and-bustle territory with the breathless Lillie, an interminable biography of British professional hussy Lillie Langtry, I naturally segued into related territory with Edward the King, a thirteen-part miniseries about the lives and times of King Edward VII, whose major life accomplishments seem to have been not taking the throne because Queen Victoria decided to live a very long life simply to spite him, and not being riddled with syphillis.
During the first eleven episodes, Edward the King was a ripping watch—simply because Annette Crosbie's turn as Queen Victoria was so positively unhinged that every time she was on the screen, I'd stop whatever I was doing, just in case she started screaming like a banshee. The last two episodes, it was mostly a crabby King Edward coughing and hacking up phlegm.

I was also treated during the run to another example of one of my unfavorite trends of these nineteen-seventies period productions, the casting of (shall we discreetly say) an Actress Of A Certain Mature Number Of Years as a teenaged-girl. I was appalled by it when thirty-two-year-old Francesca Annis was bustin' out all over as fourteen-year-old Lillie Langtry. So I wasn't all that happy in Edward the King when in the second or third episode I saw then-thirty-year-old British TV favorite Felicity Kendal show up wearing a massive hoop skirt, in pigtails, and murmur in a simpering voice something like, "But mama, I know you are the Queen yet I cannot bring myself to marry the future Emperor Frederick III of Germany for he is a man of advanced years and I am but a tender reed of sixteen."

Which had me drop everything I was doing and to glare at the screen and yell, "Oh, come on."

Like Francesca Annis, Felicity Kendal is another of my childhood favorites. She was charm personified in the BBC sitcom The Good Life, which ran on U.S. PBS stations in the nineteen-seventies as Good Neighbors. You remember it! It was about the Goods, a suburban couple who decide to become self-sufficient. Richard Briers played Tom, who was gruff and blunt and thoroughly irritable. Kendal played Barbara, who mucked about in the gardens and was winsome and adorable and who, when she was frightened or angry, made high-pitched little strangled noises, and when she was Very Serious, would pull on an adorable pair of oversized spectacles.

Well! When I saw that Netflix was carrying the horticultural amateur detectives series from the mid-2000s, Rosemary and Thyme, which also stars Kendal, I had to watch it it. I missed it the first time 'round, somehow. It's about a couple of women who decide to become detectives. It stars Pam Ferris as Thyme, who is gruff and blunt and thoroughly irritable. Kendal plays Barbara—excuse me, Rosemary—who mucks about in gardens and is winsome and adorable and who, when she is about to be bludgeoned by the murderer-of-the-week, makes high-pitched little strangled noises, and when she's Very Serious And Investigating A Clue, pulls on an adorable pair of oversized spectacles.

The two shows are very different from each other.

You see, every week, Tom and Barbara—I'm sorry, Thyme and Rosemary—head out to a posh residence, or boarding school, or resort spa, where a bunch of toffs mill about, spouting off vague threats to each other that later will be consider Hard Evidence For Murder by the local constabulary. Someone dies, Tom and Barbara—sorry, 'Rosemary'—decide they're better-equipped to nose into it than the police, and they proceed to ask so many irritating and unsubtle questions ("Lady Worthington-Smythe, exactly how much do you know about the creation of untraceable poisons from common household ingredients? Oh, no reason. Just making polite conversation!") that five minutes before the show's over, the writers just bring about a hasty conclusion by having the murderer get so irritated that he attempts to kill one of the pair.

This is usually when my interest perks up.

But no. The killers' attempts to bring down Tom and Barbara—let's just stick with those names, since I'm more comfortable with them—always fail. Instead of trying to make getaways, like gauche Americans or the lower classes might, the killers then stand about and confess everything in front of the police, because apparently that's what they do in the United Kingdom, being jolly good sports about being foiled and all.

The level of detective work involved in a typical Rosemary and Thyme installment isn't exactly Encyclopedia Brown-level. Hell, Encyclopedia Brown would roll his eyes at this crap and outsource his services to Scooby-Doo and company. If someone has an alibi like "I was with dear mummy in Little Cruddington watching a world-famous Polish pianist perform," Barbara is sure to stumble across a copy of The Little Cruddington Gazette with a (I'm not kidding!) three-inch headline typeface declaiming, WORLD-FAMOUS POLISH PIANIST CANCELS TONIGHT'S CONCERT!!! The killers magically forget to roll down their sleeves and keep covered the tattoos that link them to the special military forces that are the only known folk trained to use a special death-grip that leaves no marks about the throat.

Hell. Most of the time the plot's such a muddled mess that Tom and Barbara figure out absolutely nothing, and it's only the murderer inevitable denouement monologue that sorts everything out. Yes, it's a sloppy and appalling show . . . but I can't stop watching it.

Part of my fascination with Rosemary and Thyme is how academic an exercise it is to the writers. The cozy mystery is a genre I've enjoyed since I first read a Miss Marple novel, and it's obvious that the writers want this show to be a part of that tradition. In most cozies, though, the murder is disruptive; it tears apart the community and lays bare its secrets.

In Rosemary and Thyme, murder and violence barely go noticed. When Barbara has a former student who throws himself (or DID he?) off of a balcony and is writhing in pain, near death, on a carefully-tended gravel path, his fiancee and brother and Barbara all show up at the sound of impact. But where normal people would be shouting Oh my GOD someone call an ambulance!, the fiancee and brother just stand around for a bit and have a Conversation Full of Potential Clues, while Kendal's character lurks behind a hedge and eavesdrops, adorably. No concern for the injured bloke whatsoever. Not a blip. Also, at the end of every episode, after Tom and Barbara have 'solved'—and I use the word loosely—the mystery, they'll exchange japes with the widow or widower and everyone will laaaaaaugh, just like they used to when Barbara would say something endearingly silly at the end of The Good Life. Never mind that someone JUST GOT SHOT AND KILLED the night before. That's all water under the bridge to these people.

Even though the show's based on violent acts taking place, they're all so muffled and muted by the cozy comforts of country living that they vanish the moment they're over. I was watching an episode in which the killer snuck up on Barbara as she puttered around with test tubes and a microscope or something (I don't know. She's supposed to have a scientific mind, even though she can't remember to call an ambulance when someone drops off a high balcony) and proceeded to attempt to strangle her with piano wire, which naturally made me root for him to succeed. But no, a kindly caretaker hits the murderer over the head with an old framed photograph, causing him to collapse to the floor in a heap.

And does the caretaker say anything like, Cor blimey, what was that chap doing to you, Mistress Barbara? No. He says, "Good thing I was stopping by with this framed photograph to help you solve the mystery of the withering grass on the estate grounds, ma'am!"

And does Barbara say anything like, Thank GOD you arrived to SAVE MY LIFE! This man has murdered twice in the last two days! Help me restrain him quickly while he's still unconscious before he can leap to his feet and attempt to murder us both . . . again . . . and let's call the constable? Oh heck no. She pulls out her oversized glasses and says, in quite a normal tone, "Oh, how fehscinating. Let's have a look."

Then the murderer leaps to his feet and attempts to murder them both . . . again.

Idiots.

As I said, I can't stop watching. Perhaps picking on a television show that's long passed its expiration date is a little like shooting tuna in a rather small bucket of water, but it's hard not to have an affection for something the creators were obviously banking upon to appeal to a somewhat mature, if not outright decrepit, demographic that has fond memories of Kendal from thirty-five years ago. Myself included.

Even so. Whenever the killer of the week gets Barbara—fine, whatever—'Rosemary' by the throat, I'm the first to be shouting out at the television, "Need a hand with that?!"