THE TV COLUMN

To Walk Invisible is 3-year visit with the Brontes

The latest Masterpiece production features (from left) Charlie Murphy as Anne Bronte, Chloe Pirrie as Emily Bronte and Finn Atkins as Charlotte Bronte.
The latest Masterpiece production features (from left) Charlie Murphy as Anne Bronte, Chloe Pirrie as Emily Bronte and Finn Atkins as Charlotte Bronte.

The email arrived as if a plea from the desolate reaches of the vast wasteland: "Any suggestions for those of us who don't like murder and mayhem, cussing, etc., and are suffering Victoria withdrawal?"

Ah, such is the plight of the anglophile PBS viewer adrift in the post-Downton era, where small gems such as Masterpiece's Victoria and Netflix's The Crown give but brief succor from the nightly buffeting of sanguinary mayhem and "adult" programming.

Fortunately, PBS hears them and offers another momentary oasis of dramatic respite to validate all us forlorn English majors wandering about out here in Minow's miasma.

Masterpiece presents To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters at 8 p.m. today on AETN. The two-hour film highlights the famous literary siblings who, against all odds, "had their genius for writing romantic novels recognized in a male-dominated 19th-century world."

The film was written and directed by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax) and tells the tale of Charlotte, Emily and Anne, the dutiful clergyman's daughters who became the authors of "the most controversial fiction of the 1840s."

For those who've forgotten their English lit, Charlotte (Finn Atkins, Eden Lake) gave us Jane Eyre; Emily (Chloe Pirrie, War and Peace) produced Wuthering Heights; and Anne (Charlie Murphy, Happy Valley) wrote the shocking early feminist novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

"When they watch it," Wainwright says in a PBS interview, "I wanted people to feel as if they had been transported back in time. To reflect the real kind of a world that [the Brontes] lived in."

Atkins added, "It shows them as real people and there's a lot more that went on in their household that people don't necessarily know about."

Jonathan Pryce (Wolf Hall), who plays the sisters' father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, says, "It's not about the Brontes so much as it's about a family and the dynamics in that family. You wouldn't think that these three girls closeted in this parsonage on a windy hillside in Yorkshire would turn out to write with such depth and such insight as they did."

Adam Nagaitis, who portrays lone brother Branwell Bronte, urges young people to watch, because they will realize "regardless of my own environment, I can actually turn it into something legendary."

It was Branwell's "wild and dissipated life" that contributed to similar characters in each of the Brontes' novels.

Murphy sums up by saying, "It's a harrowing look at family life, but it also has some gorgeous hope and spirit full of dark humor as well. It's a depiction of real life -- the sweet and the sour."

Wainwright based the film largely on Charlotte's letters and concentrates on the three-year period "that saw them rise from ordinary, unmarried women, taking care of the household and their widowed father, to the secret authors of the world's most sensational literature."

"I hope people will be entertained and go away wanting to know more about the Brontes," Wainwright added.

At the least, To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters offers an evening's respite from "murder and mayhem, cussing, etc."

COMING SOON

Wednesday: Harlots, Season 1 on Hulu. It's 1763 London and one in five women is a prostitute. The Hulu original drama is a "battle of the brothels" as told from the female point of view. Probably not for the kiddies.

Imaginary Mary, 7:30 p.m., ABC (sneak preview). Actual premiere is 8:30 p.m. April 4. Jenna Elfman stars in a bizarre comedy as a woman with a CGI-created imaginary best friend.

I've loved Elfman since 1997 and Dharma & Greg, but the impish, fuzz ball imaginary Mary gets old real quick. Watch the sitcom quickly before it's gone.

Insider TV trivia: In August 1996 I witnessed an uninhibited 24-year-old Elfman dancing on top of a table at Hollywood's House of Blues at the end of an ABC press tour party. Elfman started her career dancing in music videos. Gawking next to me and appreciating the talent was a much younger Jeremy Piven. He was at the party as a new cast member of the ABC sitcom Ellen. He played Ellen's cousin.

April 2: Call the Midwife (Season 6), 7 p.m., AETN; Home Fires on Masterpiece (Season 2), 8 p.m., AETN.

April 4: iZombie (Season 3), 7 p.m., The CW.

Prison Break (Season 5), 8 p.m. on Fox. That's right! It's a reboot and Michael is not really dead!

April 5: Archer (Season 8), 9 p.m., FXX.

Brockmire (Season 1), 9 p.m., IFC. Hank Azaria stars as a legendary major league baseball announcer who has a drunken meltdown (the video went viral) when he discovers his wife's serial infidelity. Ten years later he's trying for a comeback in a small town ballpark. Amanda Peet co-stars.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Style on 03/26/2017

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