HillstreetBunz

Like all films of the period, some of the dialogue scenes seem slow (though perhaps this is closer to life than TV and movies are today!).

But whilst essentially a Hollywood 'B' movie, and despite a side character scene that would no doubt draw the ire of some people nowadays on the lookout for anything that may be construed as 'racist', it is quite a nippy little comedy.

With the sort of exceptional turn from EEH that allowed him to sustain a high profile career as a 'name' for decades, if never a romantic leading man.

He receives stalwart support from his English supporting cast (though as another reviewer commented, the talents of the great Alistair Sim are sadly wasted), and the production values are high enough to have appealed to US audiences of the time (who were happy to watch films supposedly set all over Europe before WW2- perhaps reflecting the nations first and second generation immigrant diaspora of the mate 19 and early 20c).

It employs the charm of various character actors besides EEH well, and the script, if not tight, is at least pacy and not too obvious!

I must say, my teeth were grinding even before I started to watch... reading that the Milford girls were 'independent minded rule breakers who threw off convention'. They weren't. They came from a background so privileged and entitled that the 'rules' others lived by were not even recognized by them. They didn't break rules knowingly, they were unaware of them.

The pre show blurb went on to speak of their lack of education, when in fact they were educated at home like so many women in history. A university education was never the only form of education. Their letters alone will tell any reader as much about what they did know as what they didn't.

The first episode, seemed to be the cliched cartoonish version of the English upper classes between the wars which holds sway with the chattering classes now.

But it did improve, its talented cast brought out some of the layers in their bilateral relationships, and the increasing clouds on the political horizons began to make their presence felt amidst the unfathomable stupidity of at least three of these under-employed but seemingly intelligent women.

What remains unpalatable (the commitment to fascism before, during and after the war of at least two of these daughters, and the similarly odd communist sympathies of another) is almost impossible to understand, other than to reflect on how divorced from the reality of most people they really were; by class, by design and by history.

Their characters are individually interesting when one reads their diaries, letters, work etc...but perhaps the story of these siblings cannot be told collectively without making it seem glib and crass, given its relationship to the sweep of history in the 20c.

I loved this show, but im exhausted at trying to squint and see who is where etc as it appears idiotically to have (in some misguided attempt at 'reality') been filmed by candlelight.

All those beautiful sets and costumes are as one murky old soot stained castle interior in the middle ages to me now. I give up.