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3 items from 2013

3 May 2013 4:06 PM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »

For Jane Austen's heroines a ball is a rare chance to mingle with the opposite sex. Now a BBC reconstruction of the Netherfield dance reveals the rigid social conventions that governed regency life

In Emma, Jane Austen concedes that it may be just possible to live without dancing. "Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind." But what an empty life! For anyone who still has sap in them, there is nothing like dancing – nothing to rival what Austen calls "the felicities of rapid motion". In Austen's fiction, as in many novels of the 19th century, a ball is the ultimate occasion for a heady kind of courtship – a trying out of partners that is exciting, flirtatious and downright erotic.

In Pride and Prejudice, the complicated mutual »

- John Mullan

14 February 2013 9:23 AM, PST | Huffington Post | See recent Huffington Post news »

New York — The third season of "Downton Abbey" ends this Sunday with a bang.

Exactly what that bang is, we're not going to say, in deference to the maybe half-dozen "Downton" fans who still don't know the shocking truth.

The larger point remains that after Sunday's "Masterpiece Classic" (airing at 9 p.m. Eastern on PBS), viewers must suffer "Downton" withdrawal until next season.

But until then, we'll have our memories.

And what a season this has been! The beloved valet Mr. Bates was sprung from jail and a trumped-up murder charge to begin married life with his bride, the plucky lady's maid Anna. Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, has gotten Downton Abbey back on its feet financially with an able assist from his son-in-law and presumptive heir, Matthew Crawley. Matthew wed his true love, Lady Mary Crawley. But another of Robert's daughters, Lady Sybil, died tragically during childbirth.

Through it all, »

- AP

22 January 2013 6:59 AM, PST | Huffington Post | See recent Huffington Post news »

For the new creepy thriller ‘The Following’ which debuts on Sky Atlantic this evening, British actor James Purefoy admits he has based his character on a handful of real life serial killers both dead (like Ted Bundy) and alive.

“But I’m not going to name them,” he explains, “because serial killers are, generally speaking, the most narcissistic, egocentric maniacs you could ever possibly not want to meet, and I don’t want them thinking, ‘hey, that’s me on the screen.’”

Kevin Bacon is the good guy, James Purefoy the unconscionably bad guy in Sky Atlantic's 'The Following'

Once he’d won the role in the show, which also sees Kevin Bacon’s television series debut, Purefoy – known to UK viewers for diverse roles from BBC’s ‘Mansfield Park’ to the epic serial ‘Rome’, most recently ‘Episodes’, was assiduous in his research.

“I sat in a room in Santa Monica, »

- Caroline Frost

3 items from 2013