Miss Scarlet & The Duke

Julio talks about Miss Scarlet & The Duke
 

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Spoiler alert, if you've not read, watched, or listened to the media content discussed in this episode, it will be spoiled for you.

So please refrain from doing so until you have consumed said content.

Thank you.

This is Julio's Corner, my corner of the internet, where I talk about whatever is on my mind.

Usually, I'll talk about TV shows, movies, or whatever new content has taken my interest.

This episode is being recorded on Saturday, August 10th, 2024.

And today's episode is gonna be a decent size one, maybe a short one.

It probably will be a short one.

We're going back to form.

We're going to talk about a TV show.

And before we get into it, some house cleaning.

And we're gonna start with some retractions.

So regarding the quote unquote Irish gals, the Irish women wrestlers, they are actually Scottish.

And I should have remembered that as I was talking, because they were the only Scottish people to win at Clash at the Castle, which was in Scotland.

So yeah, you know, Isla Fire and Alba Dawn or whatever their names are, the Unholy Union, as they're called, the New Tag Team women, they're from Scotland.

So they are Scottish, not Irish.

And the female boxer that is being labeled trans is not from Turkey, so two retractions there.

Number one, you know, Turkey does not like to be called Turkey anymore.

They like to be called Turkey.

I should have remembered that from the Euros.

But yeah, anyway, so she's not from Turkey.

She's from Algeria, which if memory serves, Algeria is in Africa, located where?

It's...

I'm going to...

In my hero of North Africa.

So yeah, Africa.

So that just more over, you know, that just emphasizes my whole argument about people of color getting extra scrutiny when it comes to their Y and X chromosomes.

But anyway, she's a cis woman being labeled trans by the Italian boxer that lost to her.

And the right wing just ran with this misinformation.

But the Algerian boxer is in fact a biological woman.

And she's being labeled trans because she doesn't have the quote unquote ideal feminine physical attributes that men like to drool over and masturbate to.

But anyway, moving on.

I mentioned Kirk Cousins' season.

So I said his career was ruined.

I did not mean career, I meant the season.

He was out for last season because of the Achilles injury.

Obviously, he's still playing.

He's now no longer with the Minnesota Vikings.

He's moved on to the Atlanta Falcons.

So he will be their starting quarterback this season.

And that goes for the house cleaning retractions that I had in store.

So we're going to move on to the TV portion of the show.

I mentioned a while back that I was cutting off a bunch of streaming services.

So that's still a thing.

I am canceling, I've canceled Netflix.

I still have Amazon Prime, or I should say I re-suscribe because of, I still use it for shipping.

So they got me.

And of course, football's around the corner.

So I do need them for Thursday Night Football.

But anyways, I'm digressing.

My point is, for the past few years, the majority of my media content, or my TV shows, have been K-dramas.

And the reason being is that I love the one-and-done medium of K-dramas.

But now that I've canceled all my subscription services for the most part, except for, well, now Prime Video, I still have Apple TV.

I'm trying out...

What's the name of that guy?

That company?

I've canceled YouTube TV, so I'm using someone else, and the name escapes me now.

Sling.

I'm using Sling TV because it's like...

Right now, it's going to be 20-something a month for this month, and it's going to be 40 the following because I need my wrestling fix with Sling.

So, point is, I am slowly weaning off of the K-dramas for now and going back to Western television.

Part of it has to do with, you know, I'm not subscribed to K-drama service anymore, and or Netflix, which has a lot of K-drama content.

But secondly, as much as I love the one and done medium, K-dramas are so good at getting me emotionally invested.

And I guess I need a break from these rollercoaster of emotions that are evoked in me from K-dramas and from romance, specifically K-drama romance.

Romcom series or whatever.

So anyways, I'm watching stuff with less emotional investment, so to speak.

And this next show that we're going to talk about is definitely in that vein.

It is a mystery show.

It's a British mystery show called Miss Scarlet and the Duke.

And one good thing about this show, I mean, in general, so it's Western entertainment.

So we have that going with us.

So we're going back to what I'm used to, because that's what I grew up on, Western, because I'm American.

So it's Western entertainment, unlike K-Dramas, which is Eastern.

But one cool evolution of Western entertainment, even though they don't have a one and done medium, and they go by seasons, is the season long arc.

And shows are no longer just episodic.

It's not just episode to episode with no continuity.

They now, for the most part, they may have some episodic shows, but there's still some subplots that are season long.

And so it just makes it more engaging, and a more captivating story, because it helps develop the characters, and there's an evolution in them.

There's development, there's fleshing out, which I love, because I'm all about good stories and good character development.

So anyway, in that vein, we have Miss Scarlet, which has four seasons at the moment.

I'm on season three as of right now.

So generally, I'm against multiple season shows, because K-Dramas, as I mentioned in the past, has spoiled me, but we're getting back to these types of content.

But what's my point about four seasons?

Not exactly sure.

Anyway, let's get back to the point.

The point is, this is a show about...

Set in Victorian England, and you have Miss Scarlet.

She is the only female detective known to man.

Because, you know, we're looking at Victorian England, when the suffragist movement was just starting, because women, at this point in time, had no rights.

So no right to vote, no right of ownership.

They were essentially just property to the men that they're wedded to.

So we follow the trials and triplations of this female detective who's trying to make a name for herself and try to have her own autonomy in a man's world, a literal, more stringent man's world than today.

Because obviously we still have patriarchal societies in today's modern day.

But women do have more rights now than they did in the past.

In her time, she doesn't even have the right to vote.

But anyway, so we have, like I said, we have Miss Scarlet, the first Victorian female detective and first female detective known to man.

This is obviously a work of fiction, so bear with me.

And her father, who was a private detective, dies in the first episode of the season, of season one.

And so she essentially inherits his agency, and she uses his agency to try to, well, make a living, because obviously they were, for lack of a better term, because it didn't really exist back then, but they were a blue collar working class family.

The father's detective agency was their only source of income.

They weren't royalty, or they weren't nobility.

They were just common folk who made a living as a detective.

Well, the father did until he died.

And in the first episode, you feel, you think he just died of a cardiac arrest, though throughout the season, you eventually find out that he got caught up in a big crime ring that was going on with forging of banknotes done by a cop and the cop essentially poisoned him and killed him and made it look like it was a heart attack.

So that was a season long story throughout the show of episodes of different mysteries that Miss Scarlet solved.

So she's like the main character of the show.

Now the show is called Miss Scarlet and the Duke, which is a very deceptive title because you would think, okay, so the Duke is some man of nobility, a duke, but in fact he's just a Scottish detective, which in this time, you know, the English looked down on anyone that wasn't English.

So if you're Scottish or Irish, even though you're part of the United Kingdom, even nowadays, I think it's still not to the same extent as back then, when the Empire was still strong.

But even now, I think there's still a bit of a slight amongst the British when it comes to looking on at the Scottish and the Irish.

But regardless, anyway, in this time, it's even more so.

So anyway, this guy, William Wallington, is a Scottish detective and also the childhood friend of Miss Scarlet.

Her father trained him to be the detective cop that he is today.

And his nickname is the Duke.

So that's where you get the Duke title, even though it's this Scottish man who has really no real status other than he's a white man in a white man's world.

And he is a chief inspector in the police office or the police precinct, whatever you...

I don't know, they don't have precincts back then.

They had whatever it's called.

The police department in the area of where Miss Scarlet is.

But even though he reached that level of respectability, he still doesn't have the respect of his elders who are British and don't necessarily look at him with the esteem that his fellow policemen do.

And so it's also a struggle for him to move up in ranks other than the rank that he was able to get through his own merits because of the fact that he's Scottish.

So he's another character.

And well, he's also the part of the title.

And then you have these other supporting cast members.

You have this black guy called Moses, who knows his way around the criminal world.

He's, we think he's from Jamaica, but we're not sure because he never makes it clear.

But anyways, their relationship at first starts antagonistic, but Moses learns to respect her, and they eventually develop a bit of a friendship and a working relationship, a respectable working relationship, where they see each other on equal planes.

You have Ivy Woods, who's Miss Scarlet's headmaid, and only maid, actually, because of, you know, they had to cut down on the staff when her father died.

So she stays, she stayed with her because, you know, she basically, they're like family, even though she's not.

But she raised, she raised Miss Scarlet and still does the cooking and the cleaning and all that good stuff.

You have Mr.

Potts, the police coroner, who has, who throughout the seasons becomes Ivy Woods' love interest.

And has a bit of an antagonistic relationship with Miss Scarlet because no women are allowed in his coroner's office where the, you know, dead bodies are, because that's just how, you know, he is a quote unquote respectable Christian man who has this black and white point of view of men and women and where they should be.

And women should not be around dead bodies, and especially not in his vicinity.

So they're always clashing whenever she's on a case and she needs to go to the morgue to check out the forensics.

And he's always there to get in her way.

And a new character that showed up in the show, I'm around, I'm not sure if it was season two or, well, I'm on season three.

So yeah, he showed up on season two.

His name is Patrick Nash.

He is a rival private detective who learns to respect Miss Scarlet and actually wants to hire her into his agency.

So there are a couple of times where they take on the same case and they butt heads because there's a professional rivalry going on.

But at the same time, he respects her and he appreciates her deductive abilities because she's very apt at her job.

And that is one of the reasons why he wants to make her work under him, in his agency.

But she, of course, wants her autonomy and also doesn't really respect him too much because he's known for being a little bit of an underhanded detective because he uses blackmail tactics and things like that to get his results, whereas she's a pure deducting detective who just solves cases and doesn't do any dirty play like that.

And so these are the main characters of the show.

Like I mentioned, there's currently four seasons.

There's going to be a fifth season, Sans Duke.

So it's probably going to be renamed to just Miss Scarlet because apparently the Duke is going to leave sometime in season four, which I unfortunately have found out now.

So I spoiled it for myself somehow.

I'm currently on season three where the Duke is now dating this childhood bully of Miss Scarlet's who made an appearance in season three of the show.

Actually, she made an appearance in the towards the end of season two, but now at the beginning of season three, she's now dating the Duke.

And as I mentioned, around season four sometime, he leaves the show partly because the actor, Stuart Wellington, like a lot of actors, which is why a lot of series in Brennan don't usually last more than three seasons, or in their case, what they call series for that very reason, because they feel like they need to flex their acting chops and try different things and so on.

Unlike actors here who do American television, and they're great with doing multiple seasons of a show because it's all about making residuals and living off of that work for the rest of your life.

Over there, they have a more, a different perspective on being an actor, a professional actor, in that you have to do theater and just do multiple things, not just one, just sticking to one thing your whole life.

So yeah, so, where were they going with this?

So this is on PBS here in the States.

It's, I don't know what channel it's on in England, but in the States, it's on PBS, because PBS has this show called, series of shows.

One is called Masterpiece Theater, and the other one is Masterpiece Mystery.

And so this is part of the Masterpiece Mystery show of PBS's series of shows that, that I guess licenses these British detective shows.

And so I have to say that, that yeah, this show really caught my attention.

And yeah, there's no, there's not a lot of emotional investment in, in that it doesn't tug at my heartstrings the way a K-drama does.

Though they, they did have some heartfelt moments when, when Miss Scarlet is reminiscing about her father or thinking on her, about her father's loss.

And of course, the episode where he died, there was that moment of, you know, when she's mourning him.

But that aside, it's, it's just a well-crafted show.

And you just, you, you root for her because, you know, the odds are against her, are stacked against her because she's a woman in a, in a very man's world.

And, you know, the men don't, just don't, don't, they all look down at her because, and they laugh at the idea of a woman practicing the profession of private detectiveness, of being a private detective, because it's clear that women should be in the house, being housewives, make, having children and cooking, or if not cooking, ordering the cooks and the maids of the household.

You know, they're supposed to be on domestic duty 24-7, not doing man jobs like police work or detective work and so on and so forth.

So it's cool in today's world, watching a show that's set in, you know, back in time.

Obviously, it's written by people of now who are casting an eye on this and doing some tongue in cheek here and there because clearly Miss Scarlet is the driving force of the show, showing how she outwits all the men around her in this world where they think they're superior to her.

And the irony is that that's not the case.

In fact, it's the other way around.

She's superior to all of them because she's always outsmarting them and so on.

But that aside, there are moments where the Duke, aka William Wellington, does dispense some pearls of wisdom in that, OK, yes, you're a woman.

And so people look down on you and they have these bias views of you because you're a woman.

But that's not necessarily always a disadvantage.

Look at me, I'm a Scot.

And there's these stereotypes that they have of me because I'm not British.

They think of me as just this drunken man who's controlled by his emotions, who doesn't really use his intellect as much as a proper Brit.

So I use that to my advantage and I outsmart British people in different ways.

And the example he cited was like a drinking contest with a British guy where he'll pretend that he's drunk because, you know, obviously Scots are always drunk and in fact he isn't.

And then he'll just play drunk and then be able to get something from the British guy that he gets drunk in that encounter.

So in that same way, you know, when people are looking at you as a woman and they have their guard down because of it, you should use that to your advantage.

So yeah, I'm really loving the show.

Like I said, I'm on season three now.

There's like six episodes of show series.

So really, it's like it's almost a K drama if you think about it because the K drama is about 16 episodes and I only seen so far like 14 because I saw two seasons and I'm in the beginning of season three.

So it's not that far off in terms of episodic quantity.

But that said, I'm loving it and I'm looking forward to catching up on it and see what season five brings.

And I highly recommend the show if you're into detective shows, especially those that are set in detective in Victorian England times.

And yeah, that's actually all I have to say.

Wow, this is much shorter than I thought it would be.

So as that Hanna Bavara cartoon character is always saying, exit stage, right?

So anyways, I'll cue in the outro now.

And that wraps up the show.

If you have any questions, comments, or any thoughts you'd like to share, you can reach me by clicking on the send us some fan mail link in the show notes.

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This show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international license.

This means you can share this audio, remix it, do whatever you want, just say where you got it from.

And as always, thanks for listening.