All throughout January and in the first few days of February did I have
my own rewatch of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from Cocaine Blues to Death do us part. I watched one episode a day,
but when I was done I realised I should have taken the opportunity to discuss
them a bit on this blog too. Therefore I will be doing it now and also involve my Lego project. I will not be doing one episode a day, but I will try to at
least do one episode a week and see how it goes. First up is of course Cocaine
Blues. This was the first one I saw (almost two years go on 22 February 2016) and
one of the episodes I have discussed the most in the past.
I did find the show through Essie Davis. I had become a fan of
her after watching the Babadook back in December 2015 and started looking up what
more she had done. Basically I was hooked from the very beginning. I loved Phryne Fisher from the moment she stepped onto that gangway and met Mac at the
harbour in Melbourne.
The plot is about the honourable Phryne Fisher who gets back to
Melbourne after some years abroad. She is met with her best friend Dr. Elizabeth “Mac” MacMillan who becomes her most trusted confidant throughout the
first episode. The audience soon learn about Murdoch Foyle kidnapping Phryne’s
sister Jane when they were kids and that Phryne’s main reason for returning to
Australia is to make sure he will not get out of prison. Phryne is also invited
to a luncheon at her old friend Lydia Andrew’s house, but Lydia’s husband has
been murdered.
At the Andrews’s house, Phryne encounters some of the people who will be
more and more important as the show goes on: Dot Williams, Jack Robinson and Hugh Collins. We are also introduced
to Phryne’s aunt, Prudence Stanley. When Phryne gets there, Dot comes out of
the house telling her that John Andrews has passed away and Phryne immediately gets
interested. During a visit to the bathroom where he was found, she meets Jack
for the first time. I have talked about their meeting before and I stand by
what I said back then.
Jack is easy to misjudge during this first episode. He is a bit arrogant
and stand offish and I first saw him like a typical “cop” having troubles with the lady detective,
but there is a twist to him and he grew on me as the series progressed.
Dot is hired as Phryne’s companion and will also become very important
to her. She is certainly the character who grows the most throughout the
series. In my blog entry discussing Ruddy Gore I compared her to the
invisible child Ninni who is brought to the Moomin family in Tove Jansson’s
book with the same name.
Like with Jack it is so easy to misjudge her and she
is timid and afraid of everything (especially electricity!), but under Phryne’s
care, she grows into a strong, confident young woman over the first two seasons.
In the third season she sort of regresses somewhat, but I will get into that
more when we get to those episodes.
Through the Andrews’s other maid Alice who has been dismissed after John
Andrews got her pregnant, Phryne also gets to know Bert and Cec and the social
theme of the episode: illegal abortions.
The episode shows that abortions will always happen no matter what the law says
and if it is illegal, it can end up severely hurting women while no one will be
able to charge the ones carrying them out so the women are often used and might
even die.
In one scene, Bert says that Lenin made abortion legal in the Soviet
Union in 1920 and I thought I really had to look it up. It turned out to be
true and one of the strangest things I have looked up. I really never thought
it was a subject I would look into, but at the same time I am glad I did.
Even though dealing with the past is my profession, I have never really
had an interest in the 20th century. I more or less live by the
motto: The older the better. I have
always thought you should enhance the holocaust and the Second World War
because it is really important that we never forget how horrible that was, but
Phryne has given me a real interest in the century in a totally different way. It
showed me that there are still stories that needs to be told and I am glad I
found it.