Thoughts about Cocaine Blues

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 20^th 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.

Ruddy Gore - TV vs Book

While Ruddy Gore is the 7th book about Phryne Fisher, it is the 6th episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Like in most cases this far, the plot has been reduced and changed somewhat for the TV adaptation. To be honest, I really do find part of it to benefit the pacing of the story. The theatre felt quite overcrowded in the book and, like I said in my book entry about Ruddy Gore, I did have some problems taking an interest in all the cast and crew. They are all quite egocentric and in love with each other.

I found the best part with the book to be Phryne's date with Lin Chung and the issues it provoked with interracial relationships at the time. This issue was treated by the TV show in the episode of The Green Mill Murder and I was pleasantly surprised to see Phryne contemplating it as much as she did. Same goes for her finding it sad that she is going to lose one of her lover, Dr Mark Fielding,who returns from Flying too High, to the nurse-trained actress Mollie Webb.

Phryne with Bernard Tarrant and Lin Chung

I do love that Phryne is adventurous and reckless and sort of does whatever she wants and does not care about what people think. However, I do find those moments when she gets emotional. Especially in regards to her relations to other people. It keeps her grounded. Makes her human. Even though she only has loose liasons with men, she does care about them. This caring for her lovers is taken out of the TV show almost entirely except for in the case of Lin Chung. (Again on the subject of recurring characters and plots that is evident in the book, but not on the show.) Besides Lin (and Jack Robinson of course), we do not get to see any of her "gentlemen callers" ever again. The case does rattle Phryne in a slightly different way though. When a sand bag falls, Jack saves her and it falls on Gwilym Evans (the actor Dot Williams has a celebrity crush on) instead, killing him. This incident happens in the book too, but in a slightly different way and for different reasons.

'Don't make the mistake of thinking their emotions are all put on. They're real people underneath, just exxaggerated. They talk to me', she observed, 'because I care for them. They call me Mum. The're quivering little things under all that glamour. They're always afraid that no one really loves them, that they're going to fail. But they're addicted to applause.'

~Miss Pomeroy, Ruddy Gore

The ghost of Dorothea Curtis

Even though I do prefer the simplification of the plot in the TV episode in this case, I do find it sad that they have left out one of the central themes of the book: wanting/needing to be seen. I really think this is a basic human instinct. Not that everyone does need to stand on a stage to fulfill it, but I think everyone feels a need to be acknowledged and taken seriously from time to time. The setting of the plot in a theatre and also to a certain extent the apperance of "a ghost" work well to enhance this theme.

'I bet none of you have ever handled stage machinery.'
The murmurs increased.
'Of course not, we're actors, not technicals', said Cameron Armour. 'If I'd wanted to be a tradesman, I wouldn't have done ll that voice training.' Phryne began to understand Mr Brawn's rage and scorn.

~Ruddy Gore

Phryne and Dot

It is not that the show does not deal with this subject. In fact it does so to a larger extent than the books seem to be doing actually. Phryne's employed taxi driver Bert Johnson tells his partner Cecil Yates that he is hopless when it comes to collecting strays in Cocaine Blues which is a trait also true of their employer. Both in the books and in the TV show, Phryne has an ability to really see people who needs it. She cares for them and encourages them to reach their full potential. She does not ever pamper them, which can be seen by the way she treats the female star of the theatre production Leila Esperance in the book.

Finnish author Tove Jansson is considered one of the giants in the children's litterature of the Nordic countries and her works about the Moomins are known worldwide. I have not talked about her before on this blog, because I have long felt a need to reread her books before I do so. However, one of her short stories, Det osynliga barnet (The invisible child) is very much worth mentioning here.

In the short story the character Tooticki brings the girl Ninni to the Moomin family. Ninni has been taken care of by a horrible older lady who did not like her. Because of this, she has lost all her confidence and turned completely invisible and the only way to know she is there is by the sound of the little bell, the lady had put around the girl's neck. Ninni is placed under the care and love of Moominmamma and little by little she becomes visible again.

I feel like there are certain similarities in Moominmamma's treatment of Ninni and how Phryne handles Dot in the TV show. When she first meets the younger woman in Cocaine Blues, Dot is mainly invisible. She works as a maid at the Andrews's house, but you cannot say that she draws much attention to herself. As she comes to work for Phryne however, Dot starts to develope as a person. She finds her confidence and role in life without giving herself away at the same time. And Phryne is there, nudging, caring and encouraging. You can see her become surprised by Dot's strict religious reasonings of the modern world in Cocaine Blues, but she never judge her.

"When I came to work for you, Miss, I was afraid of everything. And you taught me so many things, and you made me brave, and you made me happy."

~ Dot Williams, Death do us part

Dot is quite different in the books. She is much more timid and not as active in Phryne's cases as she is on the TV show. With Phryne's mentoring, TV-Dot starts learning the detective skills and from time to time ends up solving the crimes to a certain extent. In a way I think Dot is the main character who develope most throughout the show. I prefer the more active TV-Dot over the passive book one. The friendship between the two women in the books is just wonderful and they certainly love and respect each other (even so much that Phryne continue to wear the St Christopher medal that Dot gives her before she goes away to the circus in Blood and Circuses). However, I do miss Dot doing her own sleuthing and Phryne teaching her the ways of the detective. She does participate from time to time (like helping Phryne go through all the dressing rooms at the theatre in Ruddy Gore) but it is just not the same and the character does not go through the same evolution in the books as in the TV series.


The image of the cover of Det osynliga barnet, did I borrow from here.

Murder on the Ballarat Train - TV vs Book

Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis)

Where to start with this one? There are actually some major differences between the book and the film adaptation here. There are some new characters like Mr Tobias Butler (Richard Bligh), Jane (Ruby Rees-Wemyss) and, because they play such a big part in the story: Phryne's house Wardlow and her Hispano Suiza car probably should be mentioned in there as well. They are important parts of the show and nearly characters in their own right.

Two characters from the books are left out, or does not play such a big part in the show as in the books. Mrs Butler is the wife of Mr Butler. Both of them, together with Wardlow are introduced already in Flying too High and Ruth (Lara Robinson) plays a much greater part in the book than in the TV episode. Phryne (Essie Davis) even adopts her together with Jane and she is the one with no family, where in the TV version, she has a grandma, who Jack later on finds. I can understand the need to simplify it to just one girl, but I still thought it strange that we do not see or hear more of Ruth in the show's later episodes. She and Jane seem just as close as they are described to be in the book, but after this episode, she just vanish all together from their lives.


It is in this episode that Bert (Travis McMahon) and Cec (Anthony Sharpe) also come to work for Phryne for real if a little reluctantly in the beginning. She also gives them a new taxi, which they buy by themselves in Flying too High.

"I didn't invite you along to be useful Dot. I invited you so we could have some fun!"

~ Phryne Fisher, Murder on the Ballarat Train (TV)

Phryne Fisher & Jack Robinson (Nathan Page)

The premise of the plot is the same in both book and TV-series: Phryne and Dot (Ashleigh Cummings) are taking the train to Ballarat. In the book, she and Dot are going to there to visit some of her relatives, while in the TV episode, they are going to pick up the Hispano Suiza. The narratives in the different mediums are different as well. In the TV episode it is straight forward: First we see Phryne and Dot at the station, boarding the train and then we follow them throughtout the train ride. In the book, on the other hand, we only get to experience the train ride first hand while Phryne, Dot and some of the other passangers are being chloroformed. The rest of the journey is retold to us as the victims of the chloroform incident, which has afflicted more people in the book than on TV, (mainly Phryne herself) are interviewed by the police. The investigation is also to a larger extent accompliched on the train itself and Phryne takes part in the search for the murdered victim. The scene when she, dressed in high heels (!), more or less runs away from the police men along the train tracks is hilarious. I also cannot help but laugh when Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) sees through Phryne's small lie about opening the compartment of Mrs Henderson (Abbe Holmes) and her daughter Eunice (Maeve Dermody) with her golden pistol.

Dorothy "Dot" Williams (Ashleigh Cummings)
and Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt)

Aboard the train, we also get our first indications of both Hottie and Phrack. The former is the name for the pairing Dot Williams with Constaple Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) (Sadly, the latter is not in the book.) and the latter is the pairing of Phryne and Jack. Both names were made up by the fandom of the show and I love how both Phryne and Jack seem to ship Dot and Hugh just as much as the fans of the show do.

I have not talked so much about Hottie (nor Dot or Hugh as characters) on here and it will for certain be more in the future, but I just have to say that they are among the cutest couples I have seen on TV.

When you have watched all the existing three seasons of the show and you go back to these first few episodes, you really realise how much Dot's character evolves throughout the show. I will probably write an entire post about her at some point, because I love her. I have talked about this topic in many other entries to this blog (Not least in the one about Phryne in my My Heroines series, but mostly in my entry about Johanne Hildebrandt's book Idun. Sagan om Valhalla.), but I think it is so wonderful that neither Phryne nor the show judge Dot because of her conservatism and the fact that she shows characteristics traditionally ascribed to women. Instead, Phryne actually encourage her to find her confidence no matter what her beliefs are.

Jane (Ruby Rees-Wemyss) and Phryne Fisher.

Phrack is a different love story that I will most definitely come back to in later entries since it is just a small embryo in this episode. In fact, Jack seems very firm to not let Phryne in on the investigation at first and she is also thwarted by the other police men that first arrived at the train. (Hugh seems to like her, even though he, just like in the TV version of Cocaine Blues, he has no idea how to handle her.) However, this is also the episode where Jack and Phryne really start to cooperate on the case. At the end of the episode he, however, comes over and the routine of the nightcap is put in place.

Jack plays a bigger part in both the TV episode and the book. His character is quite different between both mediums. Even though there is nothing wrong with him in the books, I cannot help but miss the TV-version while reading.

In the beginning of the episode a little boy runs around on the platform and Phryne tells Dot that she cannot stand children. When the police later on catches a teenage girl with the murdered Mrs Henderson's missing jewelry, she is very reluctant to help out at first. Jane's story is quite different in the TV series to the one in the book, where she has lost her memory and it turns out later that she is hypnotized by Mr Merton (Jacek Koman). In the book he, and who I think is Jane's real aunt, Miss Gay are more or less exploiting teenage girls (and young women?), molesting them and/or sending them off to brothels, which is where Jane is going on the train. In the TV episode, Jane comes from a situation much similar to Oliver Twist, where Mr Merton is a Fagin-type of character, collecting what the girls have managed to steal.

Phryne: "Sorry I forgot to telephone ahead about my extra guests. We've all been somewhat distracted by Eunice's mother's murder."
Mr Butler: "A murder miss?"
Phryne: "I do hope they chloroformed her first, but hanging is never pleasant. Keep your eye on this one. She's a stowaway, a thief and probably needs delousing. I expect the police will come looking for her, but you can just refer them to me. Oh, and while I remember; careful with the hand luggage. My pistol's in there somewhere, and it may still be loaded."

Another character that is different between book and TV episode is Eunice Henderson. Not least regarding her involvement in the plot. In both she has a boyfriend called Alastair (David Berry), but whereas Lindsay (Dale March) is just his friend in the book, he is Eunice's cousin in the TV episode. The plot kind of differs more when it comes to her. In the TV episode, she plots together with Alastair to steal her mother's jewlery on the train, while in the book, he works totally on his own. In neither plot line is she the one who kills her mother, but she sort of lets it happen in the TV episode. Alastair's motive of the murder is also somewhat different. In the TV series, he seems to just wants Lindsay's inheritance, while in the book he thinks he is a superman, getting rid of unwanting people (and getting rich at the same time). I find the latter plotline much more thrilling, while I like Eunice better in the book. In the book, she becomes a writer to support her mother, who has lost all her money in a scam. This gives her a similarity to Lydia Andrews in Cocaine Blues and I find the idea of women having to provide for other family members lack of economical sense intriguing. It makes up for an interesting plotpoint and shows something about upper class women too. (Women of the lower classes ha always had to work.)

On the train, Phryne is reading a book. And not just any book, but Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. The book most have been very new at the time , because it was published in 1928 and has a rather interesting story, especially in Australia according to Wikipedia. It was banned from many countries and was subject of a trial in the United Kingdom in 1960 and a book describing this trial was also banned in Australia. However, in both cases it, by extention, led to the censorship actually being loosen. The book is a perfect fit for Phryne, but I cannot help thinking about the creator of the show giving the audience something to look up.

The pictures and gifs in this entry were found on Tumblr except the last one of Jack, which is a screen cap I made, because he was set so beautifully. (And before you ask, I do have a "small" collection of pictures from the show on my computer. I am totally nerdy about this show if you have not noticed it before.)

Cocaine Blues - TV vs Book

"Considering your last employers were a drug baroness and a rapist, surely you'd find me a moderst improvement"

~ Phryne Fisher, Cocaine Blues, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

I just realised that the two latest books I have read have had titles related to songs. Mördar-Anders is a song by Cornelis Vreeswijk. and Cocaine Blues a song by Johnny Cash. However, it is not the songs I want to talk about in this entry, but the differences between the book Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood and the TV adaptation by Every Cloud Production. There are some differences and I found myself enjoying it since the book seemed fresh even for someone who has watched the TV episode a couple of times.
There are certain basic parts of the plot that are similar. Phryne goes back to Australia after having spent some time living in the United Kingdom. Her reasons for returning is somewhat different though. On TV she comes back to prevent the man who was charged with the kidnapping of her sister to get out of jail (a plot line running through the entire first season of the TV series). In the book, she is being sent to Australia by a Colonel and his wife to find out why their daughter Lydia (married Andrews) is sick so often. Lydia Andrews also appear in the TV adaptation, but seems to be an old friend of Phryne. She, her husband John and Phryne's aunt Prudence (who does not appear at all in the book unfortunately) invite Phryne to a luncheon that is cancelled because of the murder of John.

Dr Elizabeth Macmillan (On TV usually called Mac) is another of Phryne's old friends. In the book, she travels on the boat together with Phryne, but on TV she is already in Australia, meeting Phryne when she arrives. After the abortion who nearly kills Alice (Greenham in the book. Hartley on TV) Bert and Cec brings her to Mac and alerts Phryne to her condition.

On TV Alice works as the Andrews maid together with Dorothy "Dot" Williams (who has a slightly different background and the last name Bryant in the book) and John Andrews forces himself upon her and she ends up getting pregnant. In the books the background is somewhat different and even though it feels like "the situation" still seems to have arisen through a somewhat forced sexual encounter, she does not work for John Andrews and he is not the father of her child.

There are indications that John Andrews is a rapist even in the books however. His wife seems to have trouble with sex because of this, thinking Sasha is going to rape her when he and Phryne capture her.

"(---) She finds sex loathsome, that is plain. Dirty. Disgusting. Her husband has mistreated her; no woman is born icy..."

~ Sasha De Lisse, Cocaine Blues

Actually I have to say that I do enjoy Lydia's character better in the book. On TV, she succeeds in killing her husband and that is the main plot of the episode. In the book she just plans to poison her husband and we get a little more background to her being the King of Snow. Actually I found the description of the King of Snow interesting. The character was throughout the book up until it was revealed to be Lydia described as a male. Lydia even admits to taking over the role from a woman in Paris, so it seems like the title has been used of a woman for quite some time.

Because I do so much enjoy the character of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson in the TV series, I was sad to see he was quite passive in this book. While rewatching the episode however, I realised that he is not really so much in that one either. Phryne encounters him more there than in the book, but they still does not interact as much as they do in later episodes. I have heard that his character and relations to Phryne are rather different in the books than on TV, but I do not want to have any prejudice towards his book persona until I have got to know him. As we have seen there are some differences in pretty much all characters between book and TV and the book introduces a couple of other characters as well while others are left out. One character I would have loved to see on TV is the female police working with Jack, WPC Jones.

I have to say that I do enjoy both the book and the TV episode and I think there are things they both do better and worse than each other. I prefer how both the abortion, the murder and the drug dealing plotlines are all entwined in the TV episode. It gave a better structure to the story. However, I love that Phryne's social commitment is so much stronger in the book. You see her going to dinner with the socialites of Melbourne and reacting to them trash talking the poor.

'I hope that you did not give him anything, Mr Sanderson!' 
'Of course I did, ma'am.'
'But he would only spend it on drink! You know what the working class are!'
'Indeed, ma'am, and why should he not spend it on drink? Would you deprive the poor, whose lives are band and miserable and comfortless enough, of the solace of a little relief from grinding poverty? A sordid, sodden relief perhaps, but would you be so heartless as to deny the poor even that pleasure in which all of us indulge at your generous expense?'

~ Cocaine Blues

One of the things I also prefer with the book is the solution of the mystery. On TV, Phryne kind of needs to be "rescued" by Jack and it is very unclear if they are able to catch Lydia and finish the cocaine trade. In the book Phryne saves herself! Together with Sasha, she manages to capture Lydia and it is clear that Lydia's helpers also get caught by the police. I find that ending more satisfying seeing as Phryne is no damsel in distress. (To be fair, it is one of a rather few episodes in which Jack needs to come help her out of trouble though.)

(I also would have loved for the scenes in which Phryne kisses Bert to have been in the TV episode as well, but I guess you cannot have everything you want...)


Pictures from here and here.