User Reviews

All that can be said positively for this sexist (misandrist) academic fantasy is that the clothes and interior sets are attractive, if too well-scrubbed. One cannot tell if any of the actors are good because the plot and dialogue are so hothouse silly and unreal. The story is heavy-handed, with ***SYMBOLISM*** larded into the tough old fowl of the narrative. Unfortunately, the lard is spoiled and the whole thing tainted.

I return to the misandry because of the novelist's (or polemicist's) attitude demands a distorted examination of the culture of the time and place that sucks all life, passion, feeling and commonplace activities from the things. Miserable women in thrall to a miserable gay man doomed to be drowned for his homosexuality - who behaves uncivilly because he is, after all, a man - with ***SYMBOLIC SUGAR*** and ***SYMBOLIC MINIATURES*** created by a ***SYMBOLIC CHARACTER*** all contrive to show an Amsterdam unrecognizable as a locus of human life. The writing is witless, uninspired and crude.

Yes, societal power was in the hands of men and women had to work within a difficult system to obtain independence and standing on their own. Yes, gay men were subjected to waves of persecution, with multiple rounds of execution taking place (not quite aligned with the time of the plot) in pogroms. Yes, these persecutions were used to settle grudges and reduce competition. But even as a treatise, rather than an intelligent and artful work of fiction, this mess is devious and wrongheaded.

This miniseries is one of the worst productions I've seen plopped into the PBS Masterpiece slot. A complete waste of funding and a betrayal of the feminist impulses one assumes the author told herself she was operating with.

What she actually was motivated by was, apparently, a university faculty that gave her gold stars and a reading public so lazy and inexperienced it will adopt anything it is told is ***IMPORTANT*** and for ***WOMEN***. I defy anyone to honestly state this perverse yarn is revelatory or enjoyable.