Review: The Frankenstein Chronicles

ROSS, Benjamin (Dir.), "The Frankenstein Chronicles", Frankenstein Films Ltd., Rainmark Films with Far Moor (ITV), 2015.

As they say in the funny papers, you can’t keep a good man down. Getting decapitated in Westeros it seems, can’t stop Sean Bean from doing what he does best; in fact, given his producer’s credits on this vehicle, it seems that it gives him even broader scope for calling the shots. This is a six-part British television period drama with all of the usual faces which we’ve come to expect; however, it’s not the usual Jane Austen comedy of errors, or the gritty Jack the Ripper police procedural which has been bandied about recently: it’s a whole other beast. And as this show warns us stridently we have to “Cave Baestiam” – beware the beast!

The story hangs somewhat tenaciously off Mary Shelley’s infamous book, Frankenstein. The composite body of a child, stitched together from the remains of eight children, is discovered downstream from Greenwich in London and John Marlott, a Bow Street runner specialising in breaking up smuggling rings on the Thames, is called in on special assignment to discover its origin. Marlott’s patron is Sir Robert Peel – the originator of the Metropolitan Police force – who is played by Tom Ward of “Silent Witness” fame: no stranger to the medically macabre. Marlott, played by Bean, is a lower class man of dogged persistence and with a straight-arrow moral compass. We learn that he has lost a wife and child and that these losses have called him to question his faith in God. We also learn that he has syphilis.

I’m not sure if it’s a product of today’s society, or something that was prevalent back in the 1800s, but this aspect of the character absolutely creates a distance between the viewer and the audience. My initial reaction was “ew!”, and I felt a certain queasiness watching Marlott go through the motions of his investigation. However, it is the strength of the actor and of the writing that, after taking on this knowledge, we still come to admire Marlott as a character of strength and a man of purpose. Flashbacks show us that Marlott’s child was born dead due to syphilis and that his wife committed suicide shortly after, knowing that she had contracted the disease from her husband. It’s revealed that Marlott acquired the disease while fighting in the Peninsular War, and Bean’s performance reeks of the shame and guilt which he feels for having destroyed his family by giving in to temptation. Powerful stuff, and a great basis for a lead character.

Not that syphilis was rare amongst Britannia’s fighting forces; in fact, it’s surprising that it’s not more prominent in period dramas like this. However, in this case, the disease is what causes the fantastic elements of the plot to weave their spell. Syphilis causes dementia and hallucinations, and Marlott’s investigation is a prolonged sequence of events which may have happened, or which may only have happened in Marlott’s head. The writers and directors use it sparingly – perhaps a bit more sparingly than they could have – to tangle Marlott’s quest into an ever more hopeless muddle. Throw William Blake into the mix – which they do – and it’s hallucination central.

This show uses the grim realities of Regency England to springboard the idea of monsters into its narrative. In fact, this whole show is so grim and bitter, that the notion of someone stitching bodies together out of various cadavers seems almost quirky and interesting. We wend our way in Marlott’s shadow from resurrection men to body-snatchers, to child prostitutes and their panderers, to clandestine homosexual bordellos. It’s a seamy world and every scene is replete with chipped paint and rising damp to underscore the well-established rot. Everything stinks and no-one’s life or person is spared: the scene where Marlott is confronted with a late-stage victim of his own disease – an horrific presaging of things to come – is enough to give any viewer pause. I know I did.

Counterbalancing this is the smooth and unruffled veneer of the upper classes. Every lord and lady, every cleric and knight, is proof against every fact that Marlott uncovers to use against them. By the end of the tale, we learn that those in power may look innocent, but it’s a tired mask that hides a sordid visage, as grotesque as anything that Marlott finds in the gutters of London. Marlott is, in fact, no match at all for those in power, because he is required to bow and scrape and acknowledge who pays his rent. Time and again, his brilliant detective work is undone by those who are one step in front of him.

Marlott is called upon to investigate the discovery of the composite body, and to do so secretly, because if word got out about its existence, it could thwart an upcoming “Anatomy Bill” which aims to see the bodies of those who perish in workhouses and other such charitable institutions, passed over to medical schools and hospitals for anatomisation. The discovery of the composite body is perceived as a way of casting suspicion upon what the doctors are intending to use the cadavers for and Peel asks Marlott to find the perpetrator and shut him down. Unfortunately, Marlott’s investigation causes him to cross paths with a reporter named “Boz” (Charles Dickens to you and me) and things get splashed about in a truly paparazzi fashion.

Add to this that Marlott encounters Mary Shelley in his travels and this starts to look like a poor man’s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”; however, it’s not as dire as all that. Thinking about it, it makes sense that someone (slightly cracked to be sure) might have read Frankenstein and thought “well, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me – let’s give it a shot”; after all, people believe even crazier things nowadays and feel compelled to act upon them (I’m looking at you David Icke and ISIS). The part of Mary Shelley is played by the ever-brilliant Anna Maxwell-Martin whose bravura turn in “The Bletchley Circle” has made me a fan forever. This Mary Shelley is rueful of her major opus, its macabre nature finding her no friends among the aristocracy, and forced to raise her son alone after the death of her poet husband. We learn also that she dabbled with Things Better Left Alone in her impulsive youth, things which led to the death of a comrade under dubious ‘scientific’ circumstances. We discover that, having blotted her copybook, she has descended to Marlott’s level, unable to puncture the calm of the aristocratic elite and desperately struggling to keep her head above the morass of the lower orders.

I’m trying REALLY HARD not to issue spoilers on this one so forgive me if I seem obtuse. Normally I would wade through something like this entirely in one sitting; this was so dark and ugly though, that I paced myself. That’s not to say it wasn’t good, because it was consistently brilliant all the way through; it’s just that confronting faces rotted away by malignant disease; children murdered and gutted between scenes; casual injustice and endemic cancers of society and the state; it’s all a bit of a hard ride. There are no punches being pulled in this show. That being said, there were instances where things were intimated but not carried through, and I got the sense that a lot was being banked on the promise of a second series; that this was all set-up and the really good stuff would start to roll out in season two. I’m cynical enough to know that “Season Two” is often a fantasy that never transpires, but in this case I hope it happens.

I’m giving this four tentacled horrors and a warning not to eat before viewing.