How to tell a story

How to tell a story

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

My "Wish Me Luck" Marathon

3 British spies
Just finished the third and final season of Wish Me Luck, the BBC spy drama created by Jill Hyem and Lavinia Warner in the 1980s. I haven't been so addictively engaged with a drama since listening to the audio books of the Dos Passos trilogy. I love the concept: British female spies working with the resistance in occupied France. I think the first season is the strongest but the entire series holds up for me. I love it.

Some thoughts about why I like it, in no particular order:

  • giving each new season its own slant by introducing new major characters. Keeps the story from getting stale. Keeps the initial premise and retains characters as well.
  • extraordinary production design. I don't know what their budget was but it has a very authentic look and feel, indoors and out, in villages, in mountains.
  • fine acting.
  • avoids cheap shots, lets sympathetic characters die, permits Nazis characters who don't fit stereotype, an ending that provides bitter irony without flag waving.
  • strong narrative keeps moving forward, great storytelling efficiency.
  • emotionally engaging.
Wish Me Luck, a female-led second world war resistance adventure that ran from 1988 to 1990, was genuinely groundbreaking.
Inspired by the autobiography of secret agent Nancy (The White Mouse) Wake, it starred Kate Buffery as an unhappily married mother who signed on to the Special Operations Executive, run by Jane Asher in Whitehall, to be trained in espionage and dropped into occupied France. Both survived three series, but most of their sisters-in-arms weren't so lucky. Much was filmed on location, but the cast was resolutely English: Trevor Peacock as a kindly Quercy local; Terence Hardiman a fabulously dastardly Nazi (a clear forerunner of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds). (by Catherine Shoard)
I see all 3 seasons are out in DVD and in our library, maybe in yours, too. This is first rate drama.