Quarter 1 Review 7/9

013 Adaptation – Old

There were several enjoyable parts of The Lady Detectives series from 2005, and while I toyed with including them all, I decided just to highlight my favorite, The Golden Slipper by Anna Green and dramatised by Roger Danes.  The Lady Detectives sought to tell late 19^th and early 20^th century detective fiction which starred female detectives. Violet Strange (Teresa Gallagher) was a New York-based detective, a society girl who very quietly did other work on the side.  The structure of the piece was unusual and not chronological, which lent it great weight and emotion when all was finally revealed.  The story was about four Gilded Age friends, called the Inseparables, who were being held responsible for thefts in which the stolen item was quietly later returned.  It turned out to be an early case of kleptomania from a girl crying out for help.  Violet revealed why she became a detective:  her older sister was banished from the family when she married an Italian musician.  Violet then found her later, with the musician nearly dead, and both in penury.  Since her sister wouldn’t accept Violet’s money (since it was ultimately their father’s), Violet vowed to make enough money to finance her sister’s career as an opera singer and thus help her make her own living.  Very inspiring and quite touching. It also starred Crawford Logan, Lesley Hart, and Gayanne Potter (all doing credible American accents I might add).  It was directed by Patrick Rayner.