#john beecham

This show made so little sense. Like, as if sense was a substance that didn’t exist on the planet that Beecham House was written and filmed in. It makes it nearly impossible for me to even write fix-it fic because how do you fix THE WHOLE THING? However, my thoughts on what would have made good use of the premise of the Englishman John Beecham in 1790s India...

John Beecham isn’t a former member of the Company. He’s a brilliant mathematician who couldn’t attend Oxford because he was born to a lower class family but has found his way to India where he studies with some amazing Indian scholars/mathematicians, and has come to the attention of a Maharaja. And the Maharaja’s daughter. 

Margaret Osborne’s brother died of a fever shortly after their arrival, but after they had secured introductions to various well-placed Indian aristocrats. She is linguistically gifted and is asked to be the companion to Roshanara to teach her a variety of European languages. The Empress meets her and quickly decides Margaret must be her spy.

Daniel Beecham is a mercenary who resents his brother for leaving Daniel responsible for the care/maintenance of their elderly mother. He frequents brothels, but when he meets dancing girl Chanchal, he cannot resist her entreaties and buys her freedom. He doesn’t believe he’ll ever fall in love. Chanchal is determined to prove him wrong.

Henrietta Beecham is brought to India as a chaperone/duenna for Miss Violet Woodhouse, who has failed to become engaged after multiple Seasons. Henrietta has breast cancer and has been dosing herself with laudanum to cope with the pain. 

Miss Violet Woodhouse is eager to explore. She doesn’t want to settle down and has subtly dissuaded multiple men from making her an offer. She is curious and impetuous. She’s not interested in becoming a society matron but would like a partner for adventures.  

Benoit Castillion lost his young wife and baby to a fever. He’s thrown himself into a military career because the alternative was the priesthood, but he has lost his faith. He is deeply pragmatic and respects pragmatism in others. 

It was not quite nine in the morning, but already the air was hot and thick with humidity. Even Margaret Osbourne, used to the climate as she was, found herself slightly wilting in the heat as she walked. Dear Roshanara had woken up that morning with a dreadful headache, and begged to postpone lessons and go back to bed for a few more hours’ rest. Her father and Margaret had acquiesced, and now Margaret found herself with some unexpected free time. She had chosen to make the trek to Mr. Beecham’s property, to avail herself of his chapel, as much for the pleasure of being alone with her own thoughts as for the opportunity to pray. 

Margaret took her time as she walked, breathing deep of the air that was thick and heady with the scent of frangipani blossoms and the sound of birdsong.

But when she arrived at the chapel, she found that it was already occupied. Miss Violet Woodhouse sat there, clad in her usual dress of lemon-yellow, a few sweaty tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead and the sides of her face. She turned when she heard Margaret approach, her lips pursing into a most disagreeable expression. Margaret hardly knew what she had done to merit such a greeting, except of course the crime of daring to be acquainted with Mr. Beecham.

Warning – contains spoilers

Trying to work out why Beecham House, ITV’s BIG drama that was meant to replace Downton Abbey at least in viewer size if not in exact tone, is doing so badly. A TON of publicity was thrown at it with the cast appearing on everything from The One Show to This Morning to BBC Breakfast as well as a features in newspapers and magazines. It’s the brainchild of Gurinda Chadha OBE who directed Bend it Like Beckham and the Viceroy’s House and is of Indian heritage, and the cast contains a mix of British and Indian actors some of whom will be familiar from other period dramas e.g. Tom Bateman (vanity fair), Leo Suter (Victoria) and Lesley Nichol (Downton Abbey)

Despite all this though, the opening episode only had 2.6 million viewers making it ITVs smallest 9pm Sunday drama premiere audience since 2015. Since then figures have dropped further with episode 3 dropping below 2 million. Why has it gone so horribly wrong? Yes its up against Gentleman Jack and you’d assume that the audience for the two shows would be very similar but that doesn’t explain the lack of catch up audience i.e. people watching on ITV hub

The sets are amazing, the costumes fantastic, the storyline has potential but it’s just not working.

I should say btw that Im enjoying it but possibly for the wrong reasons. Anyway my twopenneth on what’s going wrong

1.       John Beecham is very very dull. Sorry but he is. The entire show centres around him and his mysterious past and why he is the father of a mixed heritage baby. We should really care about John and what has happened to him but somehow we don’t. Possibly because the script is dire but also because he comes across as ‘earnest hipster who has been on a gap year trip to India and is now going to Indiasplain everything to everyone even the locals’. It was a mistake to try and sell Tom Bateman as the new Aiden Turner with a topless gardening scene because he just isn’t and bluntly you’ve also got Leo Suter there with HIS chest carved by angels. For some reason John is also striding around in an overcoat in the heat of Dehli and wearing Indiana Jones’ hat which is weird plus he also seems to be a bit dim. His best friend Samuel is so obviously a traitor, in fact we know he is, but dear old John cant see it even though his younger brother Daniel clocks it immediately. Which brings us on too

2.       Daniel Beecham is 100 times the more interesting brother. Daniel, as is telegraphed at us from space in the publicity what with the sprawling around, legs akimbo, grasping a hookah pipe as a penis substitute between his thighs photos, is meant to be the caddish contrast to the saintly John. Abandoned by John who left without a word, he’s fighting for the East India Company the series bad guys (where John was also a soldier). We meet him in a brothel and its obvious we’re meant to disapprove of him and yet..... He calls out his mother for her racism in changing the servants Indian names to English ones, points out the sensibleness of adopting Indian dress and customs while living there, cottons on immediately that Samuel is not to be trusted, has a fun relationship with Violet and offers to learn the sarod to please Chanchal the babies nursemaid who he wants to bang. The one area where he does fall down is with Chanchal who is as hot for him as he is for her but she wants love and marriage and he just sees her as a diversion until he goes back to the army. When he tells her this, she is of course devastated and he is called out by his mother for his behaviour in breaking her heart to which he replies he doesnt know what love is. Daniel is far more rounded and complex than John and we care more about him as a consequence plus lbr he’s hot af too.

3.       None of the Indian characters get a decent storyline. They float in and out of the story, a servant here, an ‘exotic’ princess there, a wholly enlightened next door neighbour but there’s no substance to any of them. Chandrika whose initial entrance we stanned totally as she took charge of baby August and ordered around the English women with an arched eyebrow of disdain has become ‘one of the three women fighting over John’ and just no. Chandrika doesn’t fight for a man people! She takes one if she wants and anyway they’d fight for her because she’s stunning. Chanchal is the only other Indian character with anything like a real storyline and its very predictable though Im still hoping that come the end of the series Daniel will ask her to marry him and she’ll tell him to shove it and go off with Baadal. For a drama that was sold as the British and India characters getting equal space and investment it really isn’t coming across that way at all.

4.       The miscasting of Lesley Nichol as John’s mother. She just isn’t good in the role and unfortunately her link to Downton was what ‘sold’ it to a lot pf people ‘oooh look Mrs Patmore goes upstairs’. Unfortunately it’s highlighting that in period dramas at least, she cant pull off middle class which is a shame.

5.       But the thing that is destroying it more than anything is the script. Oh dear lord its baaaaaaad. No cliché is left unsaid, no trope unused as the actors grapple with stilted dialogue and conversations breaking off where literally no one, NO ONE, would stop talking. Its not that they are talking in the language of the time, it’s a period drama you expect that, its just beyond clunky. The first two episodes were full of characters basically explaining the historical and political situation laughably shoehorned into conversation. A brief precis of text at the beginning of episode is all it would have taken “its 1795, The East India Company and the French are fighting each other and the rulers of India for its wealth. The East India Company are taking more and more territory while the French with turmoil raging in France are cut off from their chain of command and operating increasingly to their own rules. The Indian Princes do not trust the French or the British or each other” 

Survival kit against bad mood. 

She liked the way John Beecham called her Margaret. It was as if he knew it meant pearl, as if he were calling her his pearl when he said it, meaning she was beautiful, a miracle, gleaming. She liked to hear him speak, his accent not hers but recognizable, something from home that was good. She liked to see his dark eyes follow her, watching her own eyes first and then falling to her lips, the hint of her décolletage, the subtle sway of her hips. He moved so gracefully, with such confidence. She hadn’t wanted to be Castillion’s mistress.