Rag Nymph

It was a Sunday morning and I was sleepily wandering around the house and flicking TV channels when I saw this was on. In about five minutes I was hooked. I also loved the fact that it was set in mid 19th Century Newcastle, as I am from there. It tells a story of a young girl who is taken in by a rag women, Aggie and her crippled helper Ben. It a fantastic story taken from one the the books of Catherine Cookson and contains love, passion and the right amount of danger. It shows you the harsh reality of the filthy streets of 19th Century Newcastle and the difficult lives that the working class had to live in. However even though the conditions are appalling it is forgotten about when you see the warm family relationship between Aggie, Millie and Ben. This was achieved by the amazing acting of these characters. Honeysuckle Weeks (You may recognise her from Foyles War where she played Sam because it took me ages to work out where I had seen her) was great as the lead. Alec Newman who plays Ben put on a great Geordie accent even though he is actually from Scotland. I found it really refreshing to hear that accent as not many dramas are set up in Newcastle. The actors used words like Al-Reet (alright) and Eye a Na (Yes I know)which fitted in with the colloquial language and made it seem more real. I though Val McLane was fantastic as Aggie and really made me laugh. She Played her part perfectly. In all an amazing period drama that is definitely one to watch.

There are many good aspects of this BBC production: acting, sets, costumes, direction, and even sound. Unfortunately, the script undermines all of this.

The Rag Nymph is very quick-paced, to the point of confusion. I got the feeling the writers were trying to condense a textured novel into a flat television format and never quite won. The initial introduction of characters was good, but as the plot unfolds we lose clues about the characters' motivations.

What results is a rather confusing, thin storyline that hints at greater depth. Having not read the novel, and having seen several adaptations of Cookson, I suspect this picture would be much more successful if one read the novel first. Then one could infer character development and motivation, since there's very little in the script to help us along.