Bramwell

Fantastic series. Season 3 was amazing and is a good ending for the show. I watched Season 4 despite the reviews and because I usually watch shows in their entirety. However, the last season, it was like watching someone on drugs. It was horrible. The music, the way it was shot, it was all truly painful to watch. I'm going to simply pretend that Season 4 doesn't exist.

I had never heard of this series but since it was available on Netflix streaming I gave it a go.

What a pleasant surprise! It engaged me immediately and I found myself sitting through all night marathons to catch up with the story.

What the show does best is not to be cliché. The characters portrayed are not perfect human beings and have faults which makes the storyline nicely unpredictable with a few twists and turns that I found quite emotional at times.

It's very well acted throughout and Jemma Redgrave is outstanding and perfectly believable as a late Victorian doctor working in the slums of London and all the supporting cast do a fine job.

I have to add an addendum to this review since I hadn't seen the entire series when I wrote it.

The show is very good, but somehow it comes off the rails at the end of the line! Talk about a train crash!It's as though the show was canceled at the last minute so they hurried up the plot to wrap up two years into two episodes. Who knows, but all the characters are out of sync as is the plot with main characters disappearing never to be heard from again, and others appearing from no-where to take the lead. And the music get's surreal at times with no connection to the plot... at all. Quite a mystery and quite strange.

I had to remove two stars for the above reason.

How could a series take such a bad turn with writing, directing and acting not to mention settings, lighting and music. Seasons 1 thru 3 were enjoyable but I found it astounding that Eleanor was so dumb as to not see she was being used. But then the 4th season train wreck happened and proved that yes, in fact, Eleanor is that stupid. They should have ended it with season 3.

This is an exceedingly hard series to rate because the first three seasons are so terrific and the fourth is unaccountably bad. First season deserves the 9 stars I gave it. I would seriously only give the last season one--half it they'd let me. Do yourself, Eleanor and the other characters a favour and resist the temptation to watch the fourth season.

The first three seasons are interesting, well composed period pieces of life in Victorian London. Story lines focus on an intelligent, educated young woman and her widowed father. Both are doctors. At the time women doctors were an anomaly. The class and sex divisions of that society are depicted in interesting detail throughout the series as Eleanor moves from a hospital position, dabbles in middle class general practice and goes on to become head of a free infirmary in the slums of the city.

Jemma Redgrave and the other actors are simply excellent. The casting director is to be commended. The third season ends at a good point, but the series is so well done you naturally want more. Resist if you can that tempting fourth season. It is a poison apple.

Apparently the Pod People visited the set in the third-fourth season hiatus, taking over the bodies and minds of both cast and crew. The last two tedious episodes are imitations of bad art-house fare--darkly lit, with unnaturally bright lighting on certain characters' faces. Intrusive, annoying and at times downright weird music. Eleanor's devoted father and other ongoing major characters apparently were abducted by our alien visitors, for they are nowhere to be seen. The Men in Black must have visited the Thrift (Eleanor's slum-based infirmary) because there's not a mention of them or the fact the Thrift appears to be an entirely different building (with several new floors!)in the same place it always was.

Worst of all is the fact that the characters we've come to love, with all their warts and bumps, have been replaced by automatons bearing the same names and clothing. It was of passing interest to see an actress as good as Jemma Redgrave tackle the role of an entirely new (and unlikeable) character with only a name in common with the person she'd portrayed so beautifully in the past.

Do not sully the memory of these people by watching the last season. You'll only regret it. Your time will be better spent looking up Jemma Redgrave in IMDb to see her other work. That's where I'm going next.

I have followed "Bramwell" since I started watching the mini-series on PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" a few years ago. The depiction of a female doctor in Victorian England is very entertaining and groundbreaking. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in period drama or the history of medical practice.