The
Frankenstein Chronicles Debut is a Hidden Gem
by
Kristin Battestella
The
2015 British series The
Frankenstein Chronicles follows
Thames Inspector John Marlott (Sean Bean) and his runner Joseph
Nightingale (Richie Campbell) as a floater composed of other body
parts leads the police to body snatchers, abducted children, street
pimps, and even author Mary Shelley (Anna Maxwell Martin). Someone
may be copying her novel Frankenstein,
and
the home secretary wants the case solved before pesky newspaper
reporters like Boz (Ryan Sampson) print the sensational tale.
Capsizing
dangers, muddy chases, vomiting police, and a stitched together body
reassembled from at least seven children set the 1827 London dreary
for “A World Without God.” Rumors of grave robbing abound and
selling the dead to medical institutions is not a crime – this is a
seller's market doing good business despite still superstitious folk
fearing science, medicine, and what happens to body after death. Our
inspector goes through several protocols and technicalities to
research whether this butchery was done by a man of science or some
layman out to prevent the new anatomy laws, invoking a mix of morose
period noir with British lone detective angst. He's canvasing the
dirty streets for a meat market kidnapper while parliament spins
grandiose hot air on rights to autopsy versus personal penance.
Cholera, prayers, shady men at the docks with carts full of stolen
bodies – is someone murdering to procure fresh dead to sell? The
hands of the deceased seem to move when touched in “Seeing Things,”
and William Blake quotes, death bed whispers, and sing song visions
wax on the beast with the face of a man. University
hospital demonstrations on bio electricity show how to reanimate the
nervous system, however those medical seminars and the subsequent
Sunday sermons are not so different from each other. Higher up
officials don't want to hear about god fearing motives and scientific
suspicion coming together as unauthorized doctors run unapproved
clinics with their own ideologies. Investigation leads cut too close
to home, and a fireside reading with narrations from the Shelley text
invoke a self-awareness meta. An open copy of Frankenstein
laying
on the desk steers our course as the linear
tale expands into a more episodic style with incoming regular cast
high and low aiding our inspector or rousing his suspicion.
Ghostly winds, flickering candles, and blurry visions create eerie, a
supernatural clarity that helps connect clues while books such as An
Investigation into the Galvanic Response of Dead Tissue in
“All the Lost Children”
provide hand written sketches with
blood in the margins. Religion versus science abominations, laws of
God versus tyranny and oppression, and defiance of deities to defeat
death layer dialogue from the author herself along with pregnant
teens, abortion debates, and gory late stage patients who may as well
be monsters with their deformities. Past baptisms, dead families, and
uncanny nightmares escalate the inner turmoil while hymns, market
chases, and back alley fights add to the well balanced mystery, life
and death themes, precious innocence, and making amends.
Underground
tunnels and unscrupulous business transactions in “The Fortunes of
War” would have young girls sold at thirty five guineas for
'company,' and the disturbing abuses create frightening silhouettes
and threatening villains even as the uncaring uppity argue over
chapter and verse regarding bastards and police refuse extra men on a
sting gone awry. Screams, gaseous brick houses, and skeletons lead to
arrests that unfortunately don't solve the initial case butchery –
only will out one small piece of a larger twisted picture. The
aristocracy is shocked at the Frankenstein
life imitating art scandal
as fact
and fiction strike the
press,
politics, police, and the author herself for “The
Frankenstein Murders.” Drunken mad science, candlelit pacts, and
monstrous machines bring the eponymous inspirations full circle as
blackmail and the triumphant anatomy act provide a free supply of
corpses for those who will now do whatever they wish. Threats,
revelations, and suspicions swept under the rug keep the underbelly
dark while disastrous scientific pursuits go awry. Blue currents and
electricity experiments try to conquer death as the noose tightens.
Red herrings and key pieces of the mystery come together as the
audience completes the puzzle along with our constables thanks to
erotic clues, nasty denials, ill pleasures, and warped dissections.
The detectives must use one crook to catch another with cons,
betrayals, and confessions that seemingly resolve the brothel raids,
set ups, and scandals. Prophetic calendars, apparent suicides, and
emergency parliament sessions make room for plenty of dreadful
hyperbole – grotesque body snatchers have used murder to procure
and defile corpses and the dubious press thinks it's all thanks to
popular fiction! This public medicine reform may banish the body
trade, but lingering questions remain in “Lost and Found.”
Constables need proof that the deceased aren't staying dead and
buried, and someone has known it all along. Conflict among friends
and lies will out reveal the hitherto unseen beastly in plain sight
as underground discoveries, powder misfires, and final entrapments
lead to tearful trials. No one's left to believe the truth thanks to
corruption and condemnation blurring the fine line between genius and
blasphemy. Last rights go unadministered when one is guilty of much
but denies the crime at hand, and The
Frankenstein Chronicles escalates
to full on horror with frightfully successful dark science
abominations.
Producer
Sean Bean's former
soldier turned inspector John Marlott doesn't like crooked police and
his lack of fear is said to aide his quality undercover work. His
gruff silhouette contrasts the posh officials, for they dislike his
methods, deduction, and research on tides or time of death –
questioning where others do not think to look makes him a somewhat
progressive investigator even if he doesn't care for books, poetry,
or famous names of the day. Marlott has no problem with instructions,
but feigns stupidity and says his conscious is his own, playing into
people's sympathy or religion as needed despite privately lighting
candles to his deceased family and carrying sentimental lockets. The
Frankenstein Chronicles is
up front on Marlott's past, telling us how his syphilis caused his
wife and baby's deaths – he knows what it is to grieve and the
prescribed mercury tonics add disturbing visions to his prayers.
He's uncomfortable at white glove luncheons as well as church
services and cries over his past, perpetually tormented by his late
loved ones while this barbaric case puts more burdens on his
shoulders. He crosses himself at seeing these ghastly sights,
recoiling from the morbid even as his own sores worsen. Marlott's
reluctant to use a dead boy's body as bait to catch grave robbers and
gets rough in the alley brawls when he must, acting tough on the
outside and going off the book with his investigation after he steps
on powerful figures who would manipulate him for their own political
gain. Despite his own fatal mistakes, Marlott is a moral man in his
own way, dejected that making the city safer tomorrow doesn't help
the children already dead. Now certainly, I love me some Sharpe,
and
in the back of my mind I
chuckled on how The
Frankenstein Chronicles could
be what really happened
to Sharpe post-retirement. So, when Marlott says he was in the 95th
rifles and fought Bonaparte at Waterloo, wears the same boots, and
dons the damn rifle green uniform in a flashback funeral, I squeed!
Marlott's not afraid of death and ready to meet his family, not
stopping even when the case is officially closed – ultimately
breaking out that old Sharpe sword when it really comes to it!
Reprimanded
and insulted by superiors, Richie Campbell's (Liar)
Joseph Nightingale is assigned to Marlott because they don't really
care about him or the investigation. The character is initially just
a sounding board, however Marlott confides in him, laying out the
procedural methods in lieu of today's police evidence montages.
Nightingale does leg work for the proof needed, following a tip and
getting roughed up when tailing a body snatcher. He argues with
Marlott, too, countering his witness protection strategy before
earning Marlott's apology and his blessing to marry. Sadly, both
share different angers when plans go wrong and people get hurt. The
Frankenstein Chronicles offers
a fine ensemble of
familiar names and faces also including Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House) as Mary Shelley
– a sassy, outspoken writer who says outwardly genteel appearances
can be deceiving. She tells Marlott her book came from a nightmare,
however she knows more than she admits. Shelley is well-informed at a
time when women weren't permitted to be as cosmopolitan as their male
peers, and great one on one scenes make her an interesting antithesis
to Marlott. Ryan Sampson's (Plebs)
hyper young Boz is likewise a persistent little reporter who won't
give up his own sources but wants the police scoop. He circumvents
Marlott, working all the angles and exposing the bodies found. Boz
belittles him for not knowing Frankenstein
was
all the rage but he is
on Marlott's side in bringing the truth to light – so long as it's
a fantastic story. By contrast, Charlie Creed Miles (Essex Boys) and his mutton chops
match the Burke and Hare-esque thuggery. This body snatching
businessman keeps track of his livelihood, for it's just honest
supply and demand. Pritty's reluctant to snitch, but Marlott's
blackmail forces him into helping, becoming a useful, if crooked
character. Vanessa Kirby's (The
Crown) initially snotty
Lady Hervey comes to find Marlott is surprisingly honorable,
confiding in him about her family's title but little wealth even as
she wonders if he is playing her for a fool. Jemima grows closer to
him yet remains committed to a loveless marriage for money if it
helps her brother's charity hospital. Unfortunately, Lady Hervey is a
woman of god who is sorely mistaken when she puts her trust in all
these men of science. Ed Stoppard (Upstairs, Downstairs) as Daniel
Hervey speaks out against early medical laws and technicalities with
disturbingly contemporary theories when not performing abortions
behind his sister's back. Being a starving, homeless prostitute
burdened with a child is not life, he reasons, only more suffering.
He scoffs at charlatan surgeons and the home secretary's
grandstanding but offers Marlott a new medicinal spore for his
syphilis instead of the harmful mercury, doing what he can for those
less fortunate whether the Anatomy Act would ruin him or not.
Rain,
thunder, fog, river boats, marshes, and bogs set the chilly, bleak
tone for The Frankenstein
Chronicles amid
period lantern light,
overcoats, and muskets. Eerie artwork and beastly designs in the
opening credits parallel the gory sights with separated body parts,
arms and legs upon the table, bowls of entrails, and stuck pigs
contrasting the organ music, ladies frocks, bonnets, and courtly
wigs. It's bowler hats, simple crates, and bare rooms with peeling
wall plaster for lower men but parasols, pocket watches, top hats,
carriages, luggage, and grand estates for the upper echelon.
Stonework and authentic buildings accent the blustery outdoor
scenery, cobblestone streets, and humble cemeteries. Sunlight and
bright visions are few and far between amid the candlelit patinas and
small pocket portraits – the only available likeness of the
deceased – however reflections, deformed glances in the mirror, and
filming through the window panes accent the man versus monster
themes. Wooden coffins, baby
sized caskets, plain
burial shrouds, simple crosses, body bags, and tanks containing
deformed fetuses create more monsters and morose amid sophisticated
libraries, early medical gear, handwritten letters, signets, and wax
seals. Bones,
blood, electricity, ruined abbeys, and hazy, dreamlike overlays
combine with late Bach cues for final horrors, but it
is bemusing to see the same title page on that open copy of
Frankenstein over
and over again – as if we could forget our eponymous literary
source! Although many scenes happen on the move, enough information
is given with time for dialogue in reasonable length conversations,
balancing the visual pace and investigation exposition rather than
resorting to in your face editing and transitions. All six,
forty-eight minute episodes
in Series One are directed by Benjamin Ross (Poppy
Shakespeare), teaming
with writer Barry
Langford (Guilty Hearts)
for one cohesive tone on this ITV hidden gem now of course branded as
a Netflix Original.
While
some elements may be obvious, my theory on the new spins in The Frankenstein Chronicles was
totally wrong, and I again wish there were more gothic, sophisticated
series like this and Penny Dreadful. The Frankenstein Chronicles
isn't outright horror – the macabre drama, dreary case, and
disturbing mystery are not designed as a scare to frighten even as
choice gore keeps the ghastly at hand for this easy to marathon
harbinger. Instead the
British gravitas meets mad science combines for a Poe-esque caper
with literary fantastics peppering the intertwined crimes and
Frankenstein what ifs.
