Sister Anna's eyebrows

Like many a girl raised Catholic, it was my ambition to be a nun. It was never going to work for me: the poverty, perhaps, but I would have struggled with the chastity and obedience. As I stopped going to church in my teens, around the time when boys became interesting to me, the nun career path was closed to me. I do, though, love a movie or small screen drama with added nuns: Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh in Black Narcissus; the evil nuns in Philomena; Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story; and Julie Andrews as Maria in The Sound of Music.

There is something of Julie Andrews as Maria in Keeley Hawes as Sister Anna in the new TV drama Falling, written by Jack Thorne. So much so that I found myself singing ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ after watching the first two episodes. When asked to give my name, I often follow it with ‘as in “How do you solve a problem like Maria.”’ Had I entered a convent, I would also have been “a flibbertigibbet, a will-o’-the-wisp, a clown,’ and may well have worn curlers in my hair.

Maria takes some time to realise that she is in love with Baron von Trapp. She returns to the abbey, intending to obey her vows and remove herself from temptation. But God has other plans for her. She must “climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow until you find your dream”.

Sister Anna in Falling makes a snappier decision. After hot priest, Paapa Essiedu as Father David, touches her, Anna’s passions are inflamed. She knows instantly that she is in love with him, and walks out of the abbey during a bit of Latin chanting with the other nuns.

What I can’t get past are Anna’s eyebrows. In the second episode of Falling, Anna struggles when attempting to buy some civvy clothes in a department store. Confronted with multiple mirrors in the changing cubicle, she breaks down, and later tells Muriel, who is housing her and aiding her through her transition, that they have no mirrors in the convent. She also divulges that she has never shaved her legs or her armpits.

I could accept this if Anna were not so beautiful. If her teeth were not so white, if she were not wearing mascara, and if she did not have such carefully curated eyebrows. In my younger days, left to their own devices my brows would have merged into a Frida Kahlo-esque monobrow. Sister, let me tell you there are no such things as naturally shapely brows.

Nuns in make-up is just one of the things that take me out of the fictive world of TV dramas and movies. Here are a few of my least favourite things on screen:

Coffee cups with no coffee in them

At least attempt to act as though there were some liquid weight in those paper cups and, for God’s sake, keep them upright.

Ending phone calls without saying ‘Goodbye’…

…or ‘see you later’, or something like that. We have a thing in our household, when we witness this, of saying ‘Goodbye’ on their behalf. So rude, to hang up without any pleasantries. This also happens in face to face encounters, where the characters simply walk out of the room or walk away. Where are their manners?

UK-base novels/memoirs transposed to the US for the silver screen

See Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and the recent film based on John Bishop’s life, Is This Thing On? Do the US directors (yes, you, Bradley Cooper) think their home audience couldn’t cope with British characters and settings?

Re: Is This Thing On? it has that thing, seen also in the Netflix series The Four Seasons, of…

Three couples, one gay, always hanging out together and going to stay in a massive holiday home, owned by one of the couples

In some cases, both sides of a couple that has split up continue to go on holiday together, often with new partners in tow.

I’ve been married twice. Most of the friends we saw regularly during Marriage 1 were single. We didn’t hang around with two other couples, ever, and never did we go on group holidays. After we separated, and later divorced, we were rarely in the same room, let alone went on holiday together.

As for Marriage 2, the closest thing to a group holiday was when the OH accompanied me on a writing retreat in France, where he had a lovely time with the other partners of the writers, and I did not enjoy it at all.

Maybe I have never experienced the three couples holiday because none of our friends has an extensive second home with a gazillion bedrooms.

My final moan is about…

Terrible TV series that hook you in, and you must see them through to the bitter end…

… even if this entails you shouting at the screen, things like; ‘Wasn’t he tied to a chair a minute ago?’ when Christopher Eccleston is now running through the woods in Unchosen. The most devious of such terrible series uses a good cast to ensnare you. ‘Surely Christopher Eccleston, Asa Butterfield and Siobhan Finneran would only take on a well-scripted drama,’ you might say. But no, not in the case of Unchosen.

I guess what drew me towards Unchosen was the premise of the setting of a religious community, in fact a cult. The problem is … no nuns. The series turned into a proper potboiler, with murder, harbouring an escaped criminal and previously devout cult followers succumbing readily to temptations of the flesh.

The ‘Delete series link’ and ‘Remove from continue watching’ buttons are there for good reason

In our household, we have vowed not to get sucked into anymore terrible series. You can usually tell by the end of the first episode. We have already acted on this after watching one episode of Two Weeks in August; good cast, three couples away on holiday together (well, two couples and two singles, but the gay single’s boyfriend turns up, so there’s that trope again), relationships start to crack on day one. It can only get worse.

As for Sister Anna’s eyebrows and now-shaven armpits and legs, we are sticking with Falling. After two episodes, we are committed to finding out if Father David succumbs to the eyebrows and other charms of Sister Anna. If either holds an empty coffee cup, or ends a call without properly saying goodbye, we might just check out early.

But wait, here’s a movie I haven’t seen! Change of Habit promises Elvis Presley and Mary Tyler Moore as 'an idealistic doctor’ and a Sister of Mercy in false eyelashes. What’s not to like?