This really has been the wettest of all wet summers and it persists in grand style right to the bitter end. With yet another day of cricket being washed out, I thought to myself "what better way to cheer myself up than a bit of costume drama at the Trafford Centre?"

 

Well, it wasn't at all what I expected, and in fact I would go as far as to say it was downright weird and I struggled to understand it. I don't think the story itself was too bad: attractive Russian aristocrat lady falls out of love with boring older husband and into clutches of handsome dashing, much younger cavalry officer: society reacts in predictable, haughtily disapproving Victorian fashion, attractive Russian aristocratic beauty starts to suspect young lover of cheating and throws herself under a train. It's been done a thousand times in countless costume dramas, so I'm obviously missing something.

 

I get the impression that it was supposed to say something about the power of love under all possible circumstances: but hey, that's been done millions of times before, not thousands - and much better and classier to boot!! Perhaps the strange parallel story of a love affair involving relatives of the heroine was supposed to say something meaningful: - I don't know, because that story didn't lead anywhere and eventually petered out. Perhaps it was meant to mean something that it was done as if it was a stage play - but it frequently forgot and tried to be a standard costume drama. All of which went nowhere and made it seem like some sort of sixth form drama project,

 

To me it all seemed a lot of faffing about for very little purpose, so unless you're desperate to fill in a spare afternoon, or if you've got a strange compulsion to be needlessly dazed and confused by pointless "artiness", I really wouldn't bother.