Phryne, Jack and Phrack - response to comments

Back in June I published the entry The Development of Phryne Fisher. I discussed a little how I see how Phryne's background has affected her. It seems like the entry was very well recieved, but I also got some strange comments that I have felt I need to address. I know it was a long time ago, but as you probably have noticed, I have not been able to keep up with my regular posting speed in quite some time due to PhD applications and other projects in real life. In the last week however, I have been bedridden with a nasty cold, wherefore I have been forced to stress down, which I think was well needed because of the circumstances.

If I, in any way, insinuated that I thought Phryne was "damaged goods", I think you must have misunderstood what my intentions with the entry were!

Phryne has had a difficult time in the past and she clearly has suffered from some heartache due to the loss of her little sister and her, from what it seems, rather traumatic relationship with René Dubois (I think I will have reasons to explore that part of Phryne's life more in a future entry.). However, to me she cannot be considered "damaged goods". To be honest, I think that term is very degrading of her as a character. (Not least, if this was said in regard for the many men that occupy her bed from time to time.)

Flight is the method Phryne uses to avoid having to deal with the darker sides of her past. She might have picked this up because the family got an opportunity to move to England after the abduction of her little sister Jane. She is not "damaged", broken or even unhappy however. In fact she flees just to avoid being any of it. This is probably also why she does seem to keep other people at arm's length. This does not mean that she does not have many friends. In fact she seems to know pretty much everyone. However, she also seems to only opening herself up to a small numbers of select few. Mac is one of them and I would so love to see more of their back story on the show because of this.

To me season 1 is pretty much all about Phryne being forced to face the demons from her past. This is illustrated by the overarching plotline with her sister’s kidnapper Murdoch Foyle. Right before Cocaine Blues, she has come to know that he will be released from prison. This is what makes her return to Melbourne in the TV show (not the books, but I am focusing solely on TV-Phryne in this blog post). In the episode Murder in Montparnasse she also comes face to face with her abusive ex-boyfriend René Dubois. But instead of fleeing yet again, Phryne deals with both of these past abusers and this is where she stabilise as a character (mature if you so want, but that was another comment I got and if that is so important I will rephrase it) and grows.

However, she does not do so all alone. Over the course of the first two episodes of the show, Phryne starts tying people to herself and they become family. Anthony Sharpe who plays Cec on the show, said in an interview with Sherri Rabinowitz for her podcast Chatting with Sherri a while ago that the people around Phryne are all so different that you would expect it not to work out, but it does. Phryne has made it clear that the others are in her life, but they need to except that the others are also parts of it. For Ethnology class, I recently read the article En säker plats. Alternativa familjer, relationsanarki och flersamhet bland unga queeraktivister (2010) by Swedish anthropologist Fanny Ambjörnsson about how chosen families can make you feel better when your biological family does not understand you. I found myself thinking about Phryne’s situation as I read it. It deserves its own entry when I have the time, so I will leave it for the time being.

Phryne: Which reminds me, you never did tell all about the Chinese brothel. 
Jack: I have trouble recalling trauma. 
Phryne: Jack Robinson, you promised me. Do I have to put you on the couch and psychoanalyse you?

~ Death and Hysteria, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 

If you still go ahead claiming that Phryne is damaged, you really cannot deny that Jack Robinson is at least just as much damaged as she is. To be honest, after the madness that was my last Jack entry, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, I never thought I would delve into his character again, but here we go.

Phryne was greatly affected by the war, but from the little we have learned about his past, Jack was even more so. Another theme from the show that I wish to address one day is the sort of collective posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that was a result of The First World War. It is a side to the war that I have not seen so much in other portrayals, but still makes sense as part of the outcome of the war. Like with the chosen family theme, mentioned above, I would not be able to do it justice in this entry, since it will be far too long anyway. Therefore it will have to wait.

Jack: I went to war a newlywed. 
Phryne: But you came home. 
Jack: Not the man my wife married... 16 years ago. 
Phryne: War will do that to you.

~ Raisins and Almonds, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

We do not exactly know how much Jack was affected by the war, but his sensitive nature and the little we have learned about him in the show indicate that it might have given him a depression and making him at least a bit shell shocked (the term used for PTSD at the time) from his war experiences.

Like I wrote in my former Jack post, I think the Swedish notion of vemod suits Jack very well. Just like Phryne, he is not broken or damaged! There is a sad aspect to his character, but I would not say that he is unhappy per se. I do think both he and Phryne have been broken, but time and circumstances have provided them both with reasons and energy to pick themselves up again.

I do not like the insinuation about them being total messes who can only be cured by love and I do not really think that is how they are portrayed in the show either to be honest. 

I normally am a bit opposed to the cliché of crime shows about how a male and a female crime investigator who work together also for some reason need to get together romantically, but to me the Phryne and Jack pairing is different from most of those. In my latest entry Phrack, a kickstarter video and romanticized farewells, I mentioned how the show often takes troupes and clichés and twist them and that really is the case when it comes to the Phryne and Jack pairing, by fans named Phrack. I wonder how much of it comes from the gender fluidity of the characters. Both are created with both traditionally male and female traits and regarding their characters, Jack is actually more traditional female with his sensitive and Phryne is the traditional much less feeling man. I absolutely love how they come together. They are clearly attracted to each other at least from Murder on the Ballarat Train and forward, but neither of them is really prepared to act on it. Instead they both need to grow as characters and they do so together. This, to me, creates a better foundation for a lasting, equal relationship.

Since I received those comments in June/July, I have reflected a lot upon it whenever Vikings have not “raided my brain” too much. It is so easy to just ask if the commentators are watching the same show as I do, but I think there is more to it than that. Maybe we are so used to see movies and TV-shows where gender roles and romantic relationships are portrayed in a certain, stereotypical way reflecting societal norms that our expectations and prejudices somehow try to interpret whenever we see something different according to those norms and stereotypes.

Phrack, a kickstarter video and romanticized farewells

As I said in my previous entry, I am taking a course in Ethnology this semester. I felt a need to broaden my perspective of the notion of culture that I hope to make a PhD in archaeology about one day. The course has proved to be very good even though the sort of shallow time frame of the subject has me confused from time to time. If you are used to thinking in a time frame that is often thousands of years, it is definitely a challenge to limit it to the last 200. I still love it though and the literature has given me inspiration for a lot of different blogposts. Unfortunately, it has also given me less time to write them.
Anyway, on 15 September Every Cloud Production, the production company behind Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries started a Kickstarter campaign to finance the upcoming Phryne film Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears. I have to say that I am more excited and positive towards it than I was back in November last year when I wrote a post about my thoughts and feelings about a continuation of the franchise. My worries are still intact, but I have faith in them to make it good, so I did pledge. Not least because seeing Nathan Page talk to Essie Davis in the video they made for the campaign made me realise just how much I miss seeing them together.

The video was awsome. I love how Nathan is both himself, Jack and the fans of the show in it. (And before you say anything: I actually love how he looks! I think he looks like a Viking!) It starts with him looking at the end of Death Do Us Part and then he berates Jack for letting her fly away from him. When Fiona Eager and Deb Cox tells him about their plans for the films including all the foreign lovers, he seems to get a bit offended until Fiona reassures him that Jack will go after her and that Phryne cannot do anything without him.

After explaining about the Kickstarter campaign, Nathan calls the director Tony Tilse who tells him he should really talk to the most important person of them all, so of course Nathan calls Essie too and I love to see them talking to one another. I have seriously missed seeing them together and it put a smile on my face when they said that they missed each other. Yes, I am so in love with both of them. Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is my biggest nerdiness at the time and I am proud of how nerdy I am!

Now you probably wonder what all of this has to do with my Ethnology class. Nothing at all, even though talking about the so famous Folkhemmet concept which the course has made me realise has been more influential to the Swedes than I think we often understand and want to admit, has had me thinking about Phryne and I have felt a need to compare what the course literature says about Sweden in "the Phryne era". However, my thoughts about Folkhemmet and how it all has me thinking about Phryne deserves its own blogpost soon, but not this one.

Instead I want to focus on something I read in one of my course books Kulturanalytiska verktyg by Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren (2012). In chapter 4, they describe an ethnological survey at a train station and brought up how they are often used in films for dramatizing farewells. This has created a romanticized version of those farewells and my mind immediately went to the end scene of Death Do Us Part.

I love how Nathan berates Jack for just letting Phryne fly away and it is very much a typical farewell scene (at an airfield instead of a train station though). However, I feel like there is a twist to the scene that a lot of other, similar ones lack.

"Come after me Jack Robinson!" 

~ Pryne Fisher

I cannot recall that I have talked about how Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries often takes a somewhat cliché subject and twist it a little before, but the last scene of Death Do Us Part belongs in that category. Phryne is about to leave which, from what we know about Phryne, is typical behaviour for her (I have talked about it here.). When Jack turns up to say goodbye however, Phryne immediately jumps out of the plane to run up to him.

To me her asking him to come after her is a testament to just how much her mismatched Melbourne family in general and Jack in particular has come to mean to her. He wants Jack in her life and their kiss seals the deal that he will obey her. The scene and the episode, end with Phryne flying away with her father. However, the scene is not as dramatical and Jack does not shed any tears. Instead he stands calmly on the ground looking at her as she disappears in the plane, a small smile lightening up his face. To me it is proof that he sees it as a beginning and not an end.

Phryne and Jack - the first meeting

I have already written my thoughts about this on Facebook, but I thought I should write it here as well.

In the TV version of Cocaine Blues, we see Phryne Fisher meet Detective Inspector Jack Robinson for the first time in Lydia Andrews's bathroom where her husband John Andrews has been found murdered. I really do think their reaction to each other here is very interesting and it sets up the tone for the entire show in regards to their relationship.

I have talked a lot about Phryne as a character before and how complex she is in regards not least to gender norms (The latest was in the entries Blood and Circuses - TV vs book and Phryne and the gender norms of the 1920's.) and in this particular scene in the bathroom we actually get to see her using both her feminine and her masculine sides.

Phryne is good at charming people. She usually either does it with her "feminine" flirty, seductive side or her "masculine" cleverness and cunning. She is also good at knowing when to use which. The fact that she is not so good when it comes to Jack in this scene tells a lot about what a special place he will come to have in her life after this first meeting. Jack is not exactly like other men in  Phryne's life and because of this she often ends up hurting him by treating him like she would any other men.

Phryne first tries flirting with Jack. This action gives us a small glimpse at her past as a poor girl in Collingwood and also how she has been dealing with the police before. This comes up again in for example Blood and Money when she tells Jack about the swallow brooch and she gives us a much more thorough view about it.

Phryne: You know, the first thing I ever stole, the police let me keep. 
Jack: Really? 
Phryne: This little brooch in the shape of a swallow. I saw it in the pawnbroker's window, and I coveted it for a whole year until I seized the opportunity.
Jack: And you were caught? 
Phryne: Well, someone lagged. 
Jack: Ah. Then you talked your way out of it. 
Phryne: Well, I told the police that my grandmother had given it to me and my father had hocked it for a bottle of beer.

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Blood and Money

Unlike Constable Hugh Collins, who she wins over straight away in the bathroom scene in Cocaine Blues, Jack turns out not to be so easily charmed. Therefore, we see Phryne changing tactics using her cleverness and cunning side instead. But, before giving a thorough analysis of the crime scene. Interestingly enough, she at the same time, also jokes a bit about the stereotype Jack seems to think she is.

Jack: Miss Fisher, I appreciate your curiosity for crime.
Phryne: Well, every lady needs a hobby.

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Cocaine Blues

It is evident by the looks Hugh and Jack give each other that they did not expect her competence, but Jack still will not let himself get charmed by her. So Phryne tries again, going back to the flirting and finally makes him give her his card...

The Detective and the Rose - Jack Robinson and Rosie

Jack and Rosie, Murder most scandalous

I mentioned Rosie Sanderson in my post about Jack Robinson, but never talked about her so much and I know you all prefer Phryne Fisher as Jack's companion (the whole Phrack thing) and I do too, but I think it is important to talk about Rosie as well.

We do not really get to know much about Jack's first marriage more than the fact that the First World War drove he and his wife apart. Rosie is vaguely mentioned already in Murder on the Ballarat Train and we get small glimpses into their estranged marriage, until we hear they get a divorce in Murder in the Dark at the end of season 1.

We (and Phryne) get to meet Rosie for the first time in Murder most Scandalous, the first episode of season 2 and she is part of the overarching plotline in that season. She is the daughter of the Deputy Commisioner, George Sanderson and we and Jack find out that she is now engaged to her father's godson Sidney Fletcher.

Rosie, Marked for Murder

I do not hate Rosie! In fact I feel sorry for her. She does not really do anything wrong. She seems to come from a privileged household and she was probably raised into a traditional female role. I discussed the thought of "the ideal woman" in my entry about Phryne and the Astrid Lindgren girls. It originated among the bourgeois in late 18th century Europe. The bourgeois woman was considered more or less too fragile to do anything.The man was the one out in society. He created it and did so to fit himself. The woman, on the other hand, was confined to the home where her main task was to please the bourgeois man who's guidance she needed to move through life. She was her husband's subordinate in everything and she was supposed to love him submissively. During the late 19th century, these gender roles spread to other social classes, which is quite strange since experiences from basically every other social class proved that women were just as capable as men.

These gender roles are interesting in relation to Rosie, Phryne and Jack and explains their characters and actions pretty well. We do not know if Rosie belonged to a working class family before her father gained power and titles in the police force. The fact that she married a working class man (Jack) seems to indicate this. She could have married "down" of course, the system provided women with far more opportunities to move in the class system of that time than men, but we can assume she was born rather privileged. This would also mean that she was raised to fit into the category of the ideal woman at the time, described above. This means that she was raised to not have anything to do with society outside the home and to marry and support someone like her father.

Phryne meeting Rosie for the first time, Murder Most Scandalous

Compare this to Phryne who was not raised among the bourgeois. Instead, she was raised very poor and in the lower societal classes, the women had to be out and about to provide for their families just as the men did. In theory, the women were subordinated the men, but in practice they were more or less equal. This meant that she is much more used to defy the norm of the woman (and the man) that is considered a static trait among the bourgeois. Instead of idolising her father like Rosie does hers. She more or less loathes him.

Jack and Rosie, Murder most scandalous

This background explains how they both deal with men, including Jack. Rosie idolises her father and wants Jack to have a career like his. The series has not given us any facts about Jack's character prior to the war. Therefore it remains my own speculation to think that he was probably not too content or happy with the prospect of imitating his father-in-law's career even then. For short, Rosie is not used to bend societal norms. She treats Jack like her father, because that is the only type of man she knows of. I also think this is why her marriage to Jack collapsed after the war. Again, we are not told or shown what actually happened, but due to Jack's sensitive nature, one might guess he was depressed and/or shell shocked which was the term used for PTSD at the time. This was probably something entirely new to Rosie and the fact that she was raised to more or less "obey" the norms to whatever cost probably did not help.

Jack and Rosie, Murder Most Scandalous

Similar to Rosie, Phryne also treats Jack like she would her father. Actually Concetta Fabrizzi  is the only one of the three women in Jack's life that we are aware of, that does not seem to do that (I am saving Concetta for a future Phrack post.). Phryne also tend to seek male bed partners that is similar to her father. However, Jack is nothing like Henry Fisher and while Rosie does not really seem to realise she hurts Jack, Phryne does. Even though Phryne is unfamiliar with men like Jack, she does not follow the norms as strictly as Rosie does and therefore is not unfamiliar with people who fall out of them... like Jack.

Jack, Murder most Scandalous

I have compared Jack to the Astrid Lindgren boys before and the comparison works even in this case. He is neither like George Sanderson nor Henry Fisher. He is sensitive, introvered and rather emotional. I find it interesting to compare him to the hero of the book Mio min Mio (Mio my Mio). When he lives in Stockholm and is called Bo Vilhelm Olsson, he learns that boys need to be tough and brave and should never show emotions. He is never happy with this and really blooms out only when he gets to Landet i fjärran (The land of far away) and becomes prince Mio. There he can really let go of the boy norms and show how scared he is, be emotional and even hug his best friend Jum-Jum. This is also when he becomes a super hero, saving all the children from the evil Riddar Kato with a heart of stone. Jack is pretty much the same. He becomes happy when he can break free of the male norm and be his own fantastic self.

Jack: "I went to war a newlywed"
Phryne: "But you came home."
Jack: "Not the man my wife married... 16 years ago"

 ~ Raisins and Almonds

Like I said in the beginning of this (too) long post, I do not hate Rosie and I do not think the series wants us to either. In fact, Rosie's plotline is a rather tragic one. Rosie does everything right according to the book, but still comes out on the losing end of things and I do not think she ever understands what went wrong. It is obvious that she still trusts and cares for Jack (not least because of the fact that she is openly jealous of Phryne), but she does not know how to love him. The same goes for Jack I think. He still cares for Rosie (He comforts her at the end of Unnatural habits.), but he knows he cannot be the man she needs and he does not love her (He goes to Phryne instead.).

Jack and Rosie, Unnatural Habits

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson

"You might as well call me Jack. Everyone else does."

~ Jack Robinson, Murder on the Ballarat Train, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Vemod is a Swedish word that is not exactly easy to translate into English. It can best be described as an underlying, longing sadness. A sadness that is actually rather positive how strangely as that sounds. The concept might not have an equivalent in English, but I still think it summarize the character of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson perfectly.

I have talked a little about Jack in most of my previous entries about Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and the Phryne Fisher books. However, I have long felt a need to give him an entry totally on his own.

To this date I have only read four of Kerry Greenwood's books about Phryne Fisher and even though I enjoy the books just fine, I really miss the Jack of the TV series while reading. In the latest one, Death at Victoria Dock he only gets a few mentions and, unlike in the TV series, has remained pretty much in the background in the other three as well.

From Murder on the Ballarat train

There are also som major differences between the TV and book characters as well. Book-Jack is happily married with children and has much easier time accepting Phryne's meddling in police work from the very beginning. TV-Jack is far more reserved and at first thinks Phryne is a stupid socialite in need of a hobby. However, as they continue to meet at different crime scenes, he starts to respect her more. This is as far as I will take the comparison between the two. This entry will henceforth be entirely about TV-Jack because he was the one I fell in love with in the first place.

"I see a very careful man, who professes to be cynical in the face of mysteries he can't explain, and claims to have no passion in spite of a heart that runs as deep as the Pacific Ocean"

~ Phryne Fisher, Death Comes Knocking, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Jack is a very private man. Therefore we do not know much about his personal life or his background and we have never visited his home.The little we do know is that he was married to the Deputy Commisioner's daughter Rosie, but that their marriage got destroyed by his participation in the First World War and he tells Phryne that Rosie has been living with her sister for "quite some time". They get a divorce at the end of season one.
There is a lot to say about Rosie and Jack's relationship to the other women in his life, Concetta and last, but certainly not least Phryne. However I have noticed a tendency in the fandom on the internet to view Jack only through those relationships (Especially the one he has to Phryne.) and I do not think that is entirely fair to the character. Because of this, I will focus on him in this entry and only briefly go into his relationships.

"It'd be a tactical error to think you had me pegged just yet, Miss Fisher"

~ Jack Robinson, Death at Victoria Dock, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

From Murder and the Maiden

In June this year, I wrote an entry in which I discussed the similarities between Phryne and the girls Astrid Lindgren (She would have turned 109 yesterday, 14th of November, by the way.) wrote about. The Astrid Lindgren parallel actually fits very well for Jack as well. He is more or less like a typical "Astrid boy". He is somewhat lonely, introverted and brooding and like them he needs to show himself worthy of the super hero title Phryne (and the "Astrid girls") have from the very beginning. The series is also extremely good at not showing all of him at once. This might be because the show is so focused on Phryne (Which it should be. It is her show!) and we get to know the other characters through her.

At first I thought he would be like so many male detectives in murder mystery franchises. Aloof and haughty and having trouble with their bosses and their women and using violence as a mean to enhance their position. But Jack is not at all like that. I actually appreciate how the series depicts him. He deals with his experiences both from his life as a policeman and from the war in a way that is quite unusual in pop-culture of today. Especially for a male character. He desperately wants to hide his emotions, but they more or less run straight off of him anyway. Nathan Page is also extremely good at showing them without saying a word. You see it in his face, usually in less than a second so you miss it if you blink. (Essie Davis, who plays Phryne, is just as good at this.)

From Dead Air

While Phryne is the super hero, Jack is totally human. He really feels compassion for both the victims and the criminals, not least shown through his special relationship with Elsie Tizzard that is revealed in Blood and Circuses. His way of dealing with violence is similarly refreshing. He does not, like for example the character Gunvald Larsson from the Swedish police film series Beck, do it to enhance his position at all. He limits it to when it is inevitable to use it to save himself or someone else and even then he seems to be unwilling to use it to kill someone.

From what I have gathered from fan discussions and fanfictions on the Internet, Jack is generally understood as "broken", but I do not really see that. I think he might have been broken when he got back to Australia after the war. He says the war changed him and he probably has suffered depression and/or PTSD. However, he is not broken when we meet him and this is actually where I think the vemod comes in because there really is a sad longing to him which is positive in nature and makes him a rather unique character. He is definitely the best depiction of how someone who has gone through a depression really is. There will always be a sadness left, but that sadness is not exactly negative and does not prevent you from having fun. I know. I have suffered from depression myself. Besides, the word vemod itself is poetic and beautiful. Just like Jack!

Jack and Phryne

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.)