Sanditon is my favourite TV series of the past 3 years.
And if I had to give it some extra thought, I would probably come to the conclusion that it’s my favourite TV series of all time.
I’ve always had a thing for British Regency romance novels.
And for Jane Austen in particular.
Jane Austen being one of my top 5 favourite authors (the other 4 being William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
I first stumbled upon Sanditon a couple of years ago when someone posted the 6 episodes of Season 1 in English with German subtitles on YouTube (they’ve long since been removed).
From the pictures, they looked to be Regency dress and costumes.
So I clicked on Season 1 Episode 1 and started watching.
With the credits in German and no subtitles for the credits, I didn’t pay much attention.
But as I watched the show, the dialogue struck me and I thought this dialogue could easily have been written by Jane Austen.
For even though I was a big Jane Austen fan, I had never heard of her unfinished novel Sanditon.
And my father (who was a Public School History and Science teacher for over 30 years) and was a big Jane Austen fan had never mentioned Sanditon in his many discussions on her.
It was also from my dad that I inherited my love of Dickens and Shakespeare.
I developed my love for Dostoevsky after having received a book of Dostoevsky short stories from my Grade 12 Creative Writing teacher for getting the top marks in her Creative Writing class.
She had written an inscription in the book that my short stories that I had written reminded her of Dostoevsky’s short stories so that’s why she was buying me this book.
I had heard of many of Dostoevsky’s novels but I had never read any of his short stories at the time I was presented with that book.
I had read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in its entirety when I was just 14 years old (after having seen on late night television a movie version of it from the 1950s that starred Yul Brynner as Dmitri Karamazov).
And I inherited my love for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when I read a children’s book edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was just 8 years old and have been a big Sherlock Holmes fan ever since.
It was sometime after watching that YouTube series with English dialogue and German subtitles that I read that the series Sanditon was based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen.
Well that explains how the dialogue in the series reminded me so much of Jane Austen I thought.
Last year I found myself in the middle of a move.
When the trailer I was renting a room in was sold by the landlord.
After about a month (during which time I stayed with a friend), I finally found a new place.
The landlady was a sympathetic woman who took sympathy in my plight as a struggling author and bought me a television set and hooked me up to the house’s cable.
Sadly she separated from the landlord last summer.
The landlord is a bit of a dipstick or a lot of a dipstick as he stepped on my android tablet last October thoroughly ruining the keyboard on it and never offered to replace it.
A friend of mine bought me a new iPad 15 Pro this past February so now I can once again do a lot more writing.
I got my new TV from my then landlady in mid-March of 2022.
One night after discovering I got both PBS Detroit and PBS Spokane on it, I tuned in one Sunday night and discovered Season 2 of Sanditon.
It was about halfway through the season when I started watching.
Half way through the episode I made the brilliant Sherlockian deduction that Sidney Parker must have died.
Which turned out to be correct.
However I found the figure of Alexander Colbourne a lot more intriguing than Sidney Parker.
Alexander Colbourne reminded me of a far better looking version of Orson Welles’ portrayal of Edward Rochester in the 1943 film Jane Eyre (based on the Charlotte Brontë novel).
Ben Lloyd-Hughes’ portrayal of Alexander Colbourne has all the existential angst of Welles’ portrayal of Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre but is far better looking than Welles (as is to be expected from a Jane Austen hero).
This is not to take anything away from Orson Welles who is one of my film idols.
He had an outstanding intellect and was a great director and screenplay writer.
I also have the ghost of Orson Welles appearing as a character in my vampire novel (having been dispensationally released from Purgatory by Hades the Greek god of the Underworld).
Of course not having the sexual orientation of Truman Capote or Gore Vidal, I didn’t start becoming a big fan of Sanditon because of Ben Lloyd-Hughes’ portrayal of Alexander Colbourne.
It was Rose Williams’ portrayal of Charlotte Heywood and Crystal Clarke’s portrayal of Georgiana Lambe that drew me in.
I’m not going to reveal any spoilers in my review here.
I will mention some of the very humorous dialogue:
Charlotte Heywood: Your niece Augusta thinks that you regard her as an intolerable burden to you.
Alexander Colbourne: Those were her exact words?
Charlotte Heywood: Well they were in French but yes.
And in the scene where the clergyman is giving a wedding rehearsal for Lady Denham and Rowleigh Price (an elderly couple getting married), the vicar says, “And in my sermon when I talk on conjugal relations, I shall point out that the world conjugal comes from the Latin word meaning ‘to yoke’…” to which Lady Denham responds, “You most certainly will not.”
The TV series Sanditon had excellent cinematography.
I would watch each episode 3 or 4 times on a Sunday night.
The two times it was shown on PBS Detroit and then the two times it was shown on PBS Spokane.
One of the stations had it on a third time early Monday morning but which I watched with the volume on Mute so as not to disturb my roommates in the house.
It was with the sound off (but knowing what the dialogue was having watched it twice before) that I truly appreciated the cinematography.
Episode 5 of Season 3 was a cinematic masterpiece.
Each scene one of the characters was in light and the other character was in semi-darkness within the same scene.
Save towards the final scenes when both characters were in the light.
A true cinematic masterpiece.
And the entire production of Sanditon was a masterpiece.
I’m usually leery of someone trying to finish a great author’s unfinished work because it invariably isn’t up to par with the author’s excellence of style.
But the makers and the cast of Sanditon succeeded.
They created a masterpiece.
Jane Austen was a great woman and a great author.
She deserves nothing less.
-A personal commentary
and review
Written by Christopher
Thursday April 27th
2023.
The Mummy’s Ghost of Kharis was successfully sacrificed by a demon possessed elk in the CERN tunnel in Switzerland but The Flintstones Police Choir sing A Happy Anniversary in relation to the mummy’s curse of another mummy King Tut
It was 100 years ago today (April 5th 1923) that the legend of the mummy’s curse of King Tut’s tomb began with the death of George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert the 5th Earl of Carnarvon (the financier behind the Howard Carter expedition that discovered King Tut’s tomb) from a fatal mosquito bite.
Not one to say Never Say Die, Kharis, unlike Tut, returned from the dead and carried off a beautiful woman on a Louisiana plantation.
Meanwhile Disney released the documentary film The Pope Answers on its channels today.
In the film Francis tells a group of teenagers in one scene that “using [gay sex hook up apps like] Tinder is normal” and the Church’s teaching on sex is “still in diapers”.
Speaking from the Hofburg Palace in Vienna where he is attending a conference, British MP Renfield R. Renfield said, “It is somehow appropriate that this documentary on Francis is being released on Wednesday in Holy Week- the day that Judas Iscariot went to the Sanhedrin to betray Christ.”
A person dressed as Mickey Mouse and wearing Sanhedrin high priestly garb was at that moment presenting Jorge Mario Bergoglio with a huge cheque for $30 billion according to a vision that Michelangelo the Psychic Lobster 🦞 was having.
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Wednesday April 5th
2023.
Christine Daae (center) with the Phantom (left) and Viscount Raoul (right)
In the files of MI6, his code name was Diablos Nocturna.
He sat in a pub in London eating steak and kidney pie 🥧.
A very very very beautiful woman entered the pub for a take out order.
She paid the bill and left with her order.
Diablos Nocturna recognized the woman as Lucy St. Louis the woman who played Christine Daae in the 35th Anniversary West End London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of The Opera.
Lucy St. Louis as Christine Daae in the 35th Anniversary West End London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of The Opera
Diablos Nocturna took a quiet sip of his glass of ale 🍺.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of The Opera was his favourite musical and Lucy St. Louis was his favourite Christine Daae.
There had been great singers/actresses who had played Christine Daae in Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of The Opera over the years- Sarah Brightman, Emmy Rossum, Sierra Boggess.
Yet when he saw Lucy St. Louis as Christine Daae, he had said, “That is Christine.”
He had never understood why.
Then one day he had watched a YouTube video of Lucy St. Louis as Christine Daae singing with the Phantom the title song Phantom of The Opera and in the comments below the video, someone had posted the comment, “Lucy St. Louis sings the role of Christine Daae the way I had always imagined in my mind the way Christine Daae would have sung in Gaston Leroux’s original novel The Phantom of The Opera.”
And that was it.
Not many people had read Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of The Opera but he had.
In fact he had read it when he was 10 years old.
With the impressionability of someone that age.
And it wasn’t the character of The Phantom who had captivated him.
It was the character of Christine Daae.
The character who could have tamed the Phantom if the Phantom had got over his insecurities and allowed her.
For Diablos Nocturna’s entire inner life seemed to have been a battle between the Phantom within and the Viscount Raoul within.
Which one would win?
He did not know the answer.
For he had yet to meet his Christine Daae in life.
Diablos Nocturna finished his meal, paid his bill and walked out alone into the night.
The labyrinth of night.
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Monday March 27th
2023.
Two women stood talking to one another on a day in 186O
/
/
/
The extremely tall thin and lanky man stood looking at the two women who stood there talking.
/
He smiled.
/
For he could see the woman facing his left hand was black and the woman facing his right hand was white.
/
This he thought was how America should be.
//
And yet how America wasn’t.
/
/
The black woman from her style of dress was obviously a free woman.
/
And she seemed to be friends with the white woman she was talking to.
/
Strange to see this in the American South.
/
For though the tall thin lanky man was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, he resided in Illinois.
/
And was currently visiting the South incognito.
/
The man heard a sound to his own right.
/
He turned to look.
/
Standing there were 2 ₱ersons from the future.
/
One was Canadian vam₱ire hunter Dracul Van Helsing and the other was the ghost of Orson Welles.
/
They had just sto₱₱ed a ₱lot from a Havana Cuba based billionaire Neo-Nazi named Robur ₱ike (who was a direct descendant of Albert ₱ike the Confederate Brigadier-General who was the head of American Scottish Rite Freemasonry, author of the Masonic textbook authority Morals and Dogma, worshi₱₱er of Lucifer and one of the co-founders of the Ku Klux Klan) from a time-travelling ex₱eriment (involving the CERN Large Hadron Collidor) where a Nazi vam₱ire was sent back in time to assassinate Abraham Lincoln before he became ₱resident.
/
Van Helsing sto₱₱ed the ₱lot by staking the Nazi vam₱ire with a hawthorn stake and then burying the vam₱ire’s ashes (after the vam₱ire had crumbled into dust) in a crate of tobacco that coincidentally enough was bound for the Albert ₱ike estate.
/
The ghost of Orson Welles watched the staking while drinking a s₱ectral glass of s₱ectral red wine and reminiscing about his love life with various Hollywood starlets of the 194Os.
/
The ₱air vanished into the night.
/
And the extremely tall thin and lanky man thought it was just a trick of light that he had seen the ₱air.
/
He turned his attention back to the two women.
/
That a₱₱eared to be reality.
/
And he ho₱ed someday it would be a reality that would s₱read all across this land.
Albeit a Nazi vam₱ire who had signed an alliance with the vam₱ire Lev Tomi
/
who in his mortal life had been Leon Trotsky the first Commander of the Soviet Red Army
/
Now he was Commander of NATO
/
And so the Nazi vam₱ire had joined with the new Red Army commander of NATO
/
But now he was concentrating on seducing the Cat Woman
/
/
And she lay there beckoning
/
The Nazi vam₱ire a₱₱roached
/
The Cat Woman rang a bell
/
/
And the ₱anther in the ₱ainting behind her came to life
/
And ri₱₱ed the Nazi vam₱ire a₱art
And then bounded out of the room
/
And headed off to the next NATO meeting in Euro₱e
/
The Cat Woman ₱urred
/
When she saw Dracul Van Helsing enter the room
/
Writer’s Note: It was 18 years ago today on November 17th 2OO4 that I first began writing my series of vam₱ire novels. I remember the date because it was the Feast Day of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary who’s one of Hungary’s ₱atron Saints and Bela Lugosi who ₱layed Dracula in the classic 1931 Universal ₱ictures horror film Dracula was Hungarian. Hence why I chose that date. I wrote them at 4 different blogging sites Journals₱ace from 2OO4 to 2OO6, Fro₱₱er (an India based blogging site) from 2OO6 to 2OO8, Xanga from 2OO9 to 2O13 and currently Word₱ress from 2O13 to the ₱resent.
Dracul Van Helsing 
Sanditon
April 27, 2023 at 10:15 pm (Art, Arts, Commentary, Culture, Entertainment, Film, History, Literature, love, Movies, Personal essays, Romance, Television) (Alexander Colbourne, British drama, Charlotte Heywood, Rose Williams, Sanditon, Television, television shows)
Sanditon is my favourite TV series of the past 3 years.
And if I had to give it some extra thought, I would probably come to the conclusion that it’s my favourite TV series of all time.
I’ve always had a thing for British Regency romance novels.
And for Jane Austen in particular.
Jane Austen being one of my top 5 favourite authors (the other 4 being William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
I first stumbled upon Sanditon a couple of years ago when someone posted the 6 episodes of Season 1 in English with German subtitles on YouTube (they’ve long since been removed).
From the pictures, they looked to be Regency dress and costumes.
So I clicked on Season 1 Episode 1 and started watching.
With the credits in German and no subtitles for the credits, I didn’t pay much attention.
But as I watched the show, the dialogue struck me and I thought this dialogue could easily have been written by Jane Austen.
For even though I was a big Jane Austen fan, I had never heard of her unfinished novel Sanditon.
And my father (who was a Public School History and Science teacher for over 30 years) and was a big Jane Austen fan had never mentioned Sanditon in his many discussions on her.
It was also from my dad that I inherited my love of Dickens and Shakespeare.
I developed my love for Dostoevsky after having received a book of Dostoevsky short stories from my Grade 12 Creative Writing teacher for getting the top marks in her Creative Writing class.
She had written an inscription in the book that my short stories that I had written reminded her of Dostoevsky’s short stories so that’s why she was buying me this book.
I had heard of many of Dostoevsky’s novels but I had never read any of his short stories at the time I was presented with that book.
I had read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in its entirety when I was just 14 years old (after having seen on late night television a movie version of it from the 1950s that starred Yul Brynner as Dmitri Karamazov).
And I inherited my love for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when I read a children’s book edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was just 8 years old and have been a big Sherlock Holmes fan ever since.
It was sometime after watching that YouTube series with English dialogue and German subtitles that I read that the series Sanditon was based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen.
Well that explains how the dialogue in the series reminded me so much of Jane Austen I thought.
Last year I found myself in the middle of a move.
When the trailer I was renting a room in was sold by the landlord.
After about a month (during which time I stayed with a friend), I finally found a new place.
The landlady was a sympathetic woman who took sympathy in my plight as a struggling author and bought me a television set and hooked me up to the house’s cable.
Sadly she separated from the landlord last summer.
The landlord is a bit of a dipstick or a lot of a dipstick as he stepped on my android tablet last October thoroughly ruining the keyboard on it and never offered to replace it.
A friend of mine bought me a new iPad 15 Pro this past February so now I can once again do a lot more writing.
I got my new TV from my then landlady in mid-March of 2022.
One night after discovering I got both PBS Detroit and PBS Spokane on it, I tuned in one Sunday night and discovered Season 2 of Sanditon.
It was about halfway through the season when I started watching.
Half way through the episode I made the brilliant Sherlockian deduction that Sidney Parker must have died.
Which turned out to be correct.
However I found the figure of Alexander Colbourne a lot more intriguing than Sidney Parker.
Alexander Colbourne reminded me of a far better looking version of Orson Welles’ portrayal of Edward Rochester in the 1943 film Jane Eyre (based on the Charlotte Brontë novel).
Ben Lloyd-Hughes’ portrayal of Alexander Colbourne has all the existential angst of Welles’ portrayal of Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre but is far better looking than Welles (as is to be expected from a Jane Austen hero).
This is not to take anything away from Orson Welles who is one of my film idols.
He had an outstanding intellect and was a great director and screenplay writer.
I also have the ghost of Orson Welles appearing as a character in my vampire novel (having been dispensationally released from Purgatory by Hades the Greek god of the Underworld).
Of course not having the sexual orientation of Truman Capote or Gore Vidal, I didn’t start becoming a big fan of Sanditon because of Ben Lloyd-Hughes’ portrayal of Alexander Colbourne.
It was Rose Williams’ portrayal of Charlotte Heywood and Crystal Clarke’s portrayal of Georgiana Lambe that drew me in.
I’m not going to reveal any spoilers in my review here.
I will mention some of the very humorous dialogue:
Charlotte Heywood: Your niece Augusta thinks that you regard her as an intolerable burden to you.
Alexander Colbourne: Those were her exact words?
Charlotte Heywood: Well they were in French but yes.
And in the scene where the clergyman is giving a wedding rehearsal for Lady Denham and Rowleigh Price (an elderly couple getting married), the vicar says, “And in my sermon when I talk on conjugal relations, I shall point out that the world conjugal comes from the Latin word meaning ‘to yoke’…” to which Lady Denham responds, “You most certainly will not.”
The TV series Sanditon had excellent cinematography.
I would watch each episode 3 or 4 times on a Sunday night.
The two times it was shown on PBS Detroit and then the two times it was shown on PBS Spokane.
One of the stations had it on a third time early Monday morning but which I watched with the volume on Mute so as not to disturb my roommates in the house.
It was with the sound off (but knowing what the dialogue was having watched it twice before) that I truly appreciated the cinematography.
Episode 5 of Season 3 was a cinematic masterpiece.
Each scene one of the characters was in light and the other character was in semi-darkness within the same scene.
Save towards the final scenes when both characters were in the light.
A true cinematic masterpiece.
And the entire production of Sanditon was a masterpiece.
I’m usually leery of someone trying to finish a great author’s unfinished work because it invariably isn’t up to par with the author’s excellence of style.
But the makers and the cast of Sanditon succeeded.
They created a masterpiece.
Jane Austen was a great woman and a great author.
She deserves nothing less.
-A personal commentary
and review
Written by Christopher
Thursday April 27th
2023.
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