Search - Summer's Lease on DVD

Hoist the Jolly Roger!

F. S. L'hoir | Irvine, CA | 08/11/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Although I am still not certain who did what to whom and why, I nevertheless enjoyed a second watching of John Mortimer's mystery, "Summer's Lease," which I saw when it was first broadcast on PBS. "Summer's Lease" is John Gielgud's show. It does not matter how old he is; he still steals every scene as the outrageously libidinous old pirate of a father to Molly(coddle) Pargeter, a repressed 40-something wife and mother, who cannot help being embarrassed by his unrepentant tales of jolly "rogering", which he will tell to anyone, anywhere, and at any time, no matter how inappropriate the occasion. Mortimer has given Gielgud some of his best lines; one of my favorites is his apology for being a poor excuse for a socialist in a capitalist world: "Until we've got the red flag flying, we've got to live with the rat race!"



Among the delights of this series are the magnificent locations of Umbria and Tuscany, renamed Chiantishire by the British expatriate characters, since so many of them live there. As a former resident of Italy, I reveled at the sight of the cypress-dotted hills and at the sound of so many birds chirping (now a rarity in my part of California). Watching this series is equivalent to going on a vicarious vacation to some of the most stunning parts of Italy; and to put the panna on top of the gelato, as it were, we are treated to the magnificent frescoes of Piero della Francesca.



As for the mystery, it is suspenseful, as all of Mortimer's mysteries are. If it leaves us rather unsatisfied because it does not tie up all the loose ends, it nevertheless makes us think about what actually might have happened. The body in the swimming pool is a reality, but are the contessa and the British residents as sinister as they seem? Or are we, the viewers, merely seeing them through the eyes of Molly, not only a stranger in a strange land, but also a woman whose emotions are raw due to the strains put on her marriage by her philandering husband? Are we perhaps influenced by Molly's misinterpretation of her surroundings? Such a scenario renders Molly's blunderings and their catastrophic results the more convincing.



My only complaint is with Acorn Media, who, as usual, provides no subtitles that would aid those unused to British accents, or extras, other than a filmography of the actors that is difficult to read on a thirteen-inch screen (but perhaps it is more intelligible to those with a larger screen). Nevertheless, if you love Italy and enjoy John Mortimer, buy this DVD (but you might want to check out the "used and new" category on Amazon, because, as I discovered by accident, there are many new copies, straight from the manufacturer, at a much lower price, even with the $2.98 shipping and handling fees)."