Le mystère de l'étoile Polaire

"The Shadow in the North" is one of those films that, even though it is set in another time, has a modern feel to it. It's not quite up to Masterpiece Mystery standards.

Former singer Billie Piper, a beautiful young woman and a fine actress, is Sally Lockhart. Sally is an investment adviser, but one of her clients has gone broke thanks to her advice. A ship with the commodities she invested in on board disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Lloyds of London refused to settle her claim.

Sally promises the woman that she will get every cent of her money back. She goes to see the ship owner, Axel Bellmann (Jared Harris), and demands that he return the money. He refuses.

Sally asks her friends, Fred Garland and Jim Taylor, who are detectives, to investigate for her. Bellmann turns out to be a ruthless arms merchant who has developed a steam gun that is very powerful and can be used against civilians.

Someone suggested that this movie is for young viewers and hence, the modern touches. Sally is a very independent and free-thinking woman who looks about as if she belongs in the Victorian era about as much as Miley Cyrus does. The full lips, the lack of deportment, her plain speaking, her boldness - not of the era. Also she's not a big one for wearing hats. Ethnic types abound and seem to be accepted by society. I have to to think all of this was to make it palatable to teenagers. I have no objection to that - it's a well acted if confusing story (magicians and spiritualists play a role in the plot as well), and Sally is indeed all about girl power. I would love to see Billie Piper in something else, maybe something truly modern.

This is not at all what I expect from "Mystery!" Unless intended as farce, in which case it did not succeed either, I found the production far-fetched, and fraught with 21st century sensibilities and laxity.

Why did Sally only wear a hat to visit the villain? Was it 1875 when she was investigating, but 1970 or later in the rest of the story? I would have expected her to cover her head whenever she went out, with the exception of emergency.

And though very funny (*Was* it an attempt at farce?), during the scene at the Patent Office, I wasn't sure whether the Anglo-Asian clerk was befuddled by Sally because she was a woman or ineptly flirting with her.

To quote Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." This production eliminated none of the impossible, and so we are left wallowing in disbelief at what we are expected to accept as the "truth" of the story.

Not being a reader of Pullman, I cannot comment on how true it is to the book on which it was based. Perhaps Mr. Pullman deserves the blame for my incredulity?

It is sad when an excellent cast is wasted in something quite as preposterous as this.

Imagine a late Victorian London where a near teenage young lady styles herself a 'Financial Consultant', and sinks a retired school teacher's entire retirement savings in a shipping line that goes bankrupt after its ship -- apparently the only one -- mysteriously disappears at sea on a calm day.

The plucky financial consultant resolves to retrieve the retirement funds, and begins investigating in a culturally thoroughly modern, multicultural London, as if maybe the screen writer and casting director had failed to notice the Victorian settings and worked a modern script, while everybody else did their best to recreate Victorian London without paying attention to the incongruities and anachronisms of the script.

Throw in mediums, psychic visions, mysterious foreigners, dastardly businessmen, surprisingly unintimidating goons, secret weddings, and love affairs that are so complicated that even the cast seems quite unable to work out who is involved with whom until the very end.

Fans of Philip Pullman's 'Sally Lockhart' books may not mind any of it, but this movie will leave the uninitiated puzzled as to their success.

In the second in Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart trilogy, his heroine Sally Lockhart, parentless and alone, has found a ramshackle, surrogate family in Fred Garland's photographer-cum-private investigator, his uncle, and cheeky cockney Jim Taylor. Protected by her enormous hound, Chaka, she is now a financial consultant, using the patchy education her father had given her to advantage and staunchly defending her independence in Victorian London. The story kicks off with two events: one of Sally's clients explains that she has been ruined by the failure of a business she invested in on Sally's advice. At the same time a magician named McKinnon seeks Fred's help as he believes he has witnessed a murder. These circumstances combine to make a thread that leads straight to a dangerous businessman and sinister work in a factory in the north, and great danger for all of Sally's friends.

I'd really enjoyed "The Ruby in the Smoke", the first of the adaptations of the brave and modern Sally Lockhart trilogy, when it aired on British TV last Christmas. I was very excited to hear a sequel was planned; thought the chemistry between the radiant Billie Piper's Sally and J J Field's pleasing Fred Garland had worked well, and the stories are strong base material, even if squished into a TV slot.

But...maybe it was watching this with my parents when it aired over New Year on British TV - but I found this strangely detached, even a bit mechanical. This time round the leads' chemistry seemed to be absent, the script dry, the story rushed (as was the previous one) - the relations between the characters insufficiently explained. Considering we'd had to wait a year for this one, I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps the aim was to make a classroom-suitable programme for Victorian History lessons? - if so, why air it post watershed?

I wouldn't mind watching it again to find out whether it was just a false first impression. Sally is the Victorian heroine girls need today; incidentally, I disagree with other reviewers' annoyance with her modern look - it's exactly this quality that makes her a perfect poster girl to draw younger viewers into historical fiction. Ditto the thoroughly enlightened casting policy, reflecting actual, modern British society in a way you'll hardly ever see in historical TV shows. I've got a lot of time for both leads; and the baddie, Bellmann, was quietly menacing. It also looked amazing, packed with great period details. If they make it to the third in the trilogy I'd be very surprised, but would hope that they can find a way to better draw out the drama and excitement. Meanwhile, the excellent original books are a must if you enjoyed this even a bit.

The Sally Lockhart mysteries proved to be a mild disappointment. They are not up to the usual BBC period drama standards - or rather they haven't gotten the period drama treatment. The story relies heavily on a Victorian atmosphere, but you rarely get this in the film adaptations. First of all, Miss Piper, lovely and talented as she is, has the least Victorian beauty imaginable. She is so much AD 2000 that every scene with her in it loses every kind of credibility. One can argue that women were born with different features in olden days - but they pretty much tried to rearrange their facial muscles to imitate the accepted standards of any given era. Where today's actresses try to make their lips appear lush and succulent, every Victorian girl would have subconsciously made every effort to make her mouth appear as a tiny rosebud. The same goes for eyes, hair, posture, gestures. Miss Piper walks straight out of 2007 and makes everything around her 2007.

Watching the adaptations, one also gets the impression that the Victorian society was very welcoming to different races and accepted them into the society with open arms. Almost in every single shot featuring the London society, there are Asian, Caribbean and Black people, the latter even boosting rasta hairstyle on one occasion. The golden truth however is that representatives of these races only got into contact with The Society as footmen and servants, and never ever mixed with them.

My overall impression was that these adaptations were meant for a young viewer who cares little for the authenticity of a traditional well mounted BBC period piece production. If you want some moderate tension and a fairly watchable entertainment with some good moments, don't hesitate to view these films. I don't regret sitting through them at one go, I only wish I would have been totally overwhelmed.