Last Tango in Halifax - No Spoilers Here!

Ann Reid and Derek Jacobi as Celia and Alan

Luckily, due to my job as a school librarian I have the summers off.

Unluckily, due to a bout with Mono (that's glandular fever to you Brits), I spent about three weeks of my summer vacation on the couch.

Luckily, I discovered Last Tango in Halifax to get me through.

In my feverish state, I happened upon the current episode (at the time) of Last Tango in Halifax on my wonderful local public television station WETA UK (p.s., they have a lovely little blog called Telly Visions).  I was immediately hooked but needless to say I was a bit behind - by about 19 episodes or so.  So with a major spoiler under my belt...I backtracked courtesy of Netflix and watched all of the episodes I'd missed.

If you don't know the premise, here it is in a nutshell.  Alan Buttershaw and Celia Dawson are widowers in their 70s who are reunited after 60 years courtesy of their FaceBook-savvy grandsons. Alan lives with his sheep-farmer daughter, Gillian and his grandlad Raff, while Celia lives with her Headmistress daughter, Caroline and her grandsons Lawrence and William.  But of course, that's not all and the series bursts out of the gate with much ground covered in season 1, episode 1.

My favorite actor in the series is Derek Jacobi who plays Alan Buttershaw.  He's just so believeable, so natural - he's an absolute pleasure to watch.



Here are a few things that I enjoyed as I laid dramatically on my sickbed:

1) Last Tango is a perfect drinking game if you binge watch the episodes.  In my case I hydrated (I was sick remember) as so:

a)  A car pulls in or out of a drive (sip of water)
b)  A character says "I'll put the kettle on." (large gulp of water)
c)  A character exclaims "I'm cooking!" (drink the entire glass of water)

2) Inside jokes...

I'm sure there were many more that went over my head, but I loved when (no spoiler) Alan Buttershaw says, "Now heaven walks on earth..." and then wonders if that's a quote from Shakespeare.  Quite so, and I love that it's from Twelfth Night in which Jacobi starred as Malvolio.

3)  Subtitles

Because I'm all up to date on LTIH, I'm watching the episodes again...this time with the subtitles on. Getting lots of smart dialogue that otherwise got lost in the shuffle.  Any favorite expressions from LTIH that you've picked up?

Well, I'm off to put the kettle on.

xo,

Amy

What Am I Reading Monday - Brit Lit Edition 2.2.15

Congratulations to Hannahlily over at Full Metal Whimsy who will become one of the first U.S. readers {in my estimation - don't quote me on this!} to get her hands on a copy of Arsenic for Tea by my author idol Robin Stevens!

Unfortunately I did not get to read any new MG or YA Brit Lit this past week, {although I did finish the Call the Midwife trilogy.  If you have not read these memoirs by Jennifer Worth you absolutely must.  Bleak, astonishing, wonderful, magical, spiritual all at once.}

Heart-breaking and heart-warming all at once.

I hope to be back on track this week with Jonathan Stroud's The Whispering Skull.  I raved about the first book in the series, so I am very much looking forward to the second.

I'm guessing this will be as spine-tingling as the first!

Any Brit Lit you'd recommend this week?

Sunday Expressions: What?

No, really what?

What?

No, what?

This week's Sunday Expression was inspired by Sophie Brookover who after listening to a few Jeeves & Wooster audiobooks increased her British vocabulary impressively and
exponentially.  This tweet had me particularly intrigued...

So, what is what?

Sophie's theory is that it emphasizes the speaker's point and is used to "encourage agreement with an expectation of a response like 'quite so', 'indeed', or "I jolly well agree!'".

I jolly well agree and feel like it's similar to the Hindi "accha" which can be used in a variety of situations and for different meanings.

Ah, the mystery of British expressions, what?

Do you use what? and when, what?

And thank you, Sophie, for your simply dashing use of British expressions.