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Season Three
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Episode 26 - Crime and Punishment (1866)
Subtitle: This isn't Lassie!
Abby calls Daniel: Vauxhall Station
Daniel calls Abby: Grand Central
Casting: A 1920s silent melodrama , which conveys a lot of emotion in a single shot, starring James Cagney
Advice: Some people find it hard to keep up with Russian names, because everyone has a ton of nicknames--but just remember that we do this in English, too. If you look up what the nicknames are short for and make a list, it will help you keep it straight.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: Someone famously dresses in yellow stockings (Abby). It might be Christmas Day in Russia, but in England, it's something else (Daniel).
Show Notes: A rare example of Abby setting the scene.
Episode 27 - Twelfth Night (1602)
Subtitle: The Heteros by any other name would smell as sweet
Abby calls Daniel: English muffin
Casting: A Frat Pack comedy with Jennifer Lawrence as Viola, Paul Rudd as Orsino, Will Ferrell as Roby, and John C. Reilly as Andrew (Abby); Satyajit Ray adaptation like his The Chess Players (Daniel)
Advice: Shakespeare tends to be a bit more explicit in his 'message' and themes in his tertiary plot lines; they're often a commentary on the main plot.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: The name of the protagonist is Dolores.
Show Notes: Daniel yells at listeners for listening to our Christmas Carol episode outside of the Christmas season.
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Episode 28 - Lolita (1955)
Subtitle: Don't skip the preface!
Abby calls Daniel: George Formby
Daniel calls Abby: George Foreman
Casting: Mean-spirited 1980s or early '90s comedy with Bill Murray as Humbert, a young Reese Witherspoon as Lolita, and Bobcat Goldthwaite as Clare Quilty.
Advice: Disgust can be a useful critical tool: precisely what is disgusting to you? Is it the content, the way the content is handled? Are you disgusted with a character, a narrator, or an author? Is the author being satirical?
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: A play that gets studied a lot in Britain, set in the Midlands, about the world's worst engagement party.
Show Notes: We start our Audience Pick Tournament for Season 4 (voting on Twitter).
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Episode 29 - An Inspector Calls (1945)
Subtitle: Same sh*t, different decade
Abby calls Daniel: Cor Blimey
Daniel calls Abby: Whistlin' Dixie
Casting: A deeply weird, anxious David Lynch adaptation, with Laura Dern as Sheila, Diane Ladd as Sybil, Kyle MacLachlan as Gerald, Jack Nance as Arthur, Willem Dafoe as the Inspector.
Advice: It's helpful to compare different adaptations of a play. You can see how different directors interpret these texts, AND a play is always a product of and commentary on the time in which it's staged.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: A Halloween episode. The text is the first example of its genre, and it features someone getting covered in someone else's nosebleed
Episode 30 - The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Subtitle: The drowned astrologer didn't see THIS coming
Abby calls Daniel: Sticky Wicket
Daniel calls Abby: The End Zone
Casting: An Akira Kurosawa adaptation with Toshiro Mifune as Manfred
Advice: If you don't understand a text, get a good critical edition (usually published by a university press), with a lot of footnotes and with an introduction by a scholar. This will explain all the references you don't get.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: Our second Halloween episode: the most famous ghost story in literature after A Christmas Carol. Or maybe it's not a ghost story at all. Maybe someone just goes sex-mad and hallucinates the whole thing.
Show Notes: We guest starred on an episode of Kate Lister's podcast, Betwixt the Sheets, released around this time, talking about this and other Gothic literature.
Episode 31 - The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Subtitle: The medlar doesn't fall far from the tree
Abby calls Daniel: The Artful Dodger
Daniel calls Abby: Huckleberry Finn
Casting: A 1970s Stanley Kubrick film with Mia Farrow as the governess, Malcolm McDowell as Peter Quint, and the creepy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang kids as Miles and Flora.
Advice: It's a good idea to look up other books that make use of similar devices. For this text, look up other nineteenth-century books about governesses and you can start building connections between them (Abby); there's no definite meaning of a text, there's never one single right answer (Daniel).
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: We're not going to tell you a story next time. We're going to tell you 24 stories. It may not be April, but we can still curl up around the fire at the Tabard Inn and have a listen.
Episode 32a - The Canterbury Tales - PART ONE (14th Century)
Subtitle: The Great Bowel Shift
Abby calls Daniel: The NHS
Daniel calls Abby:
Show Notes: The first and only time we'll have a guest (Abby's best friend Justine calls our emergency hotline to give medieval expertise); the first two-parter, and the first multi-story text.
Episode 32b - The Canterbury Tales - PART TWO (14th Century)
Subtitle: You Friar F*ck Mother Tucker
Abby calls Daniel: Affordable public transport
Daniel calls Abby: Dodge Studebaker (or the Chattanooga Choo-Choo)
Casting: Late '90s or early '00s primetime miniseries event with two dozen veteran character actors.
Advice: With really long epics, especially ones with smaller tales making up a bigger tale, don't try to read it all in one go. Pace yourself. Read maybe one a day, otherwise you'll get exhausted.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: We've covered two Bronte texts in previous episodes, but there's something missing. There's a third one. Anne? We don't know who that is, unless you mean Antoinette (wink).
Episode 33 - Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Subtitle: The Orient and the Auk-cident
Abby calls Daniel: 'Allo Guvnah
Daniel calls Abby: Howdy Partner
Casting: Set in the present day, done in the style of Fleabag or Broad City. Can do a lot with white women and their privilege.
Advice: Pay attention to flowers and plants and look up what they mean: there's a whole 'language' of flowers that novelists use.
Clue to the Next Episode: We're always doing queer readings and encouraging characters to come out of the closet. This time we're going into a closet. Or maybe not exactly a closet....
Show Notes: We upgraded our microphones.
Episode 34 - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
Subtitle: It's Basic Epicurean Cosmology
Abby calls Daniel: Tiffin for elevensies
Daniel calls Abby: Eggs and a slice of cantaloupe for brunch
Casting: A Hallmark channel Christmas romance. Christina Hendrix is the White Witch, a literal actual lion is Aslan, in Hallmark of the Beast.
Advice: If anyone ever dies in a book and comes back to life, or sacrifices themselves for someone else just say it's a Jesus parallel.
Clue to the Next Episode: Our Valentine's Day episode. A sexy and controversial text set in the East Midlands.
Show Notes: Our Christmas Special. Daniel brought in Turkish Delight; we have MeasuringWorth: Hermeneutics Edition
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