Presenting The Deliciously Wicked Comic Drama Mapp & Lucia

Oh, yes. This is one of those rare series where not only was the book thoughtfully adapted for the screen, but also the casting was perfect. They shouldn’t have messed with perfection.

Remember scene when Geraldine and Nigel check into hotel and clerk thinks they're a couple.

The Lucia books are my favorite easy reading novels of all time. Basically they're about two women and a handful of other men and women in small town England in the 20s, but really they're all the bitchiest, meanest, funniest gays ever written. Benson was gay, as was almost all his family, including his mother, the wife of the archbishop of Canterbury, who left him for a woman.

Funnier lines in this book than in all of Will and Grace.

I have been a fan of these books since the 80s. They are amazing and when I try and tell people what they’re about they look at me, wondering how they could possibly be funny. They really are works of art. I loved the original television series and it’s true that they kept the spirit of the books. The remake was too self-conscious and rather awful.

The setting and premise of the books sounds like an utter bore-fest. In the hands of many other writers, the characters of Mapp and Lucia would have sunk into obscurity almost immediately after publication. Benson's skill at characterisation and his excoriating satire turn what would have been insipid comic melodrama into something quite remarkable, which is probably as popular today as when first published - undoubtedly helped by the tours-de-force of McEwan and Scales in the original TV adaptation. I wonder how many people read the books when they were originally published, and laughed at the characters without realising that they themselves behaved in more or less the same manner.

Was rather young when Mapp & Lucia aired on local PBS station, so didn't get everything. Went back again as an adult and binged (complete with snacks and beverages), and things were far more clear.

I mean "Quaint Irene", who knew?

Only watched first time because knew Nigel Hawthorne from "Yes, Minister", but his portrayal of Georgie was just a full circle round from Sir Humphrey Appleby GCB KBE MVO.

What first go around of Mapp and Lucia captured so well was a delicious slice of English country society during between the war years. Main characters all have some money of course (none of them work but have houses with servants, cars, etc...), but we're talking more about the gentry here than nobility.

If you liked the original books you should also treat yourself to Paying Guests, and Secret Lives, both are very much in the Mapp & Lucia vein. I think they might have dramatized Paying Guests some years ago.

Geraldine McEwan is such as hammy actress, hence perfect in the role of Queen Lucia. She was terrible as Mrs. Proudie in "Barchester Chronicles", where Alan Rickman was brilliant, although he was overacting a bit too.

I think the the newer series is actually quite good. It incorporates more motifs from "Miss Mapp", which deserves its own series (or movie). Too bad that there are only 3 episodes.

Prunella Scales sounds like a skin disease.

Bless her. Poor thing has Alzheimer's.

She's a national treasure though. Gave us probably one of the finest characters in comedy....

Come here Basil!

I recently watched The Flame Trees Of Thicka on Amazon. It was good. GeraLdine McGowan played Mrs. Nimmo- she was good in her role.

[quote] She's a national treasure though. Gave us probably one of the finest characters in comedy....

Especially when you realize there are only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers. Very few American actresses could create such an iconic character with only 12 30 minute episodes. Plus there was a four year break between Season 1 and Season 2.

I'm enough of a confirmed Luciaphile to have made a day trip from London to Rye (i.e,. Tilling) on a visit some years back. It was wonderful to walk through the town and see the places that were fictionalized in Benson's books. Particular fun was climbing to the top of the church bell tower to confirm that one would not be able to see the 'giardino segretto' from there.

Lamb House, Benson's home and the model of the place Mapp and Lucia fought over so much, is very impressive, though closed to the public. Before Benson, it was the home of Henry James, and after Benson, Rumer Godden. Radclyffe Hall also lived in Rye, so the town has many gay reference points

How many episodes does The Comeback have, dearie?

R13 Rye is lovely!

Did you meet anyone on the train?

R13 I so much wish I knew you -- I would love to talk to someone about these books, especially someone who knows them so well and has visited Lamb House. I understand the garden room was bombed during the war. Still, I'd love to see it.

Man, I wish there was some way we could connect and chat about these books. I love them so much.

You both could create email accounts precisely for such discussion: mapp@.... lucia@... etc.

Well, we tried to connect people over common interests, but you all turned your back on us!

R13 here. In the late 1970s, a hardcover omnibus edition of all the Lucia books was published. You used to be able to find them easily in used book stores. At the time the original books had been our of print for years. I used to buy it whenever I spotted one, so I could give them to friends.

These are among the few novels that have made me laugh out loud while reading them. My BF kept asking me what was so funny, and I told him he would just have to read them for himself. And when he did, he had the same reaction. As he got to the later novels, he slowed down reading them because he didn't want the series to end.

Anyone watcher Prunella and hubby Timothy West on Great Canal Journeys? A couple terribly in love. Beautiful series.

I like Lucia better than Miss Mapp, who is a bitter cunt. Lucia ENJOYED life; Mapp was just resentful and shrewish.

[quote]Anyone watcher Prunella and hubby Timothy West on Great Canal Journeys? A couple terribly in love.

And their son is a cutie.

I agree with R8 that MISS MAPP would make a great standalone movie. Back in the '90s my fantasy casting of it would have been Dawn French as Miss Mapp and Jennifer Saunders as Diva Plaistow.

The 1985 series got rather lukewarm reviews when it ran on PBS in the States, though it was an instant hit among gay viewers. I think the TV critics of the time felt it wasn't quite in the league of the weightier Masterpiece Theatre fare they were accustomed to, like Jewel in the Crown and Brideshead Revisited.

R10, not "come here, Basil" - simply "BASIL!"

R23, what I find most remarkable is how relevant Mapp and Lucia are today although everything took place 100 years ago. The health fads, the faking of accents and abilities, the jockeying, the backstabbing, the alcoholism, the guru, the obsession with cutesy houses and gardens, the sucking up to celebrities, the obsession with awards, the one-upmanship...it is all there.

R16, R13, I love these books too and I am Austrian, hence partially responsible for bombing of the garden room. And were are in good company :apparently the Queen Mother loved them too. There is a great audio version of "Miss Mapp", read by Nadia May, on Audible.

Dear OP,

thank you so very much for sharing this little gem. I got immediately hooked and just finished the second episode and I fully intend to watch the third after sending this comment.

I'd like to watch it, but it seems to be streamable only on one of those specialized British services. Is it available anywhere else?

For those who have seen the original, I've always been a bit confused by the ending of the last episode. When "dear Poppy" the Duchess of Sheffield stays with Lucia for a night, no one believes Lucia and thinking she made it up to impress everyone. At the subsequent dinner that Poppy attends she mentions staying overnight and everyone looks angrily at Mapp. But all of them thought Lucia was lying, so why do they all blame Mapp? The book ends by saying that everyone began talking very quickly. I've never fully understood it.

r7 I read [italic]Paying Guests[/italic] and [italic]Secret Lives[/italic] last year. The former was hard to get into and mean-spirited at the end, but the latter was as fun and delicious as the contents of a hotel restaurant's dessert cart.

R20 I think all the episodes are on Youtube.

I've been a Luciaphile since I worked in a restaurant in the 80s and a guest turned me on to them. I have all six of them in two volumes and I take them on vacation -- or used to. My favorite is Lucia in London -- a brilliant entry in the series that really nails all the snobbery. I like the residents of Riseholme a bit more than those in Tilling. It is almost impossible to tell people about them: Oh, it's about two women in a seaside village who are always trying to become the leading society figure. The usual response is, Yeah, sounds great.

I don't like the 2014 remake much, despite liking every one of the actors for their past work. The original was perfectly cast, even though aside for the three leads there are many name actors (maybe Dennis Lill). Both series take lines from the book almost word for word.

R32 I love the museum and the "weedj" in that book, the butcher's boy pushing Mrs. Boucher in her bath chair racing around the green and Mrs. Antrobus waving her ear horn around like an elephant searching for a bun. You can read it on Project Gutenberg

[quote] but we're talking more about the gentry here than nobility

We Americans don't quite know what 'gentry' means, R6. Are those upper-middle-class-people? or store-keepers rather than shop-keepers?

I don't know.

I find myself craving lobster à la Riseholme.

I read Miss Mapp first and now am a Mappophile. I did not know that Queen Lucia came first.

"Au Reservoir" was the "Sizemeat Verificatia" of the 1920s. No doubt that EF Benson would have been a major Data lounger.

I just found out a while ago that his father was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not a bad looking man either.

Interesting site for those just finding out about Mapp & Lucia.

Duh.

I really don't understand BBC marketing. The recent Mapp & Lucia is only available on Region 2 DVD. They sit on so many marketable productions and though I subscribe to Britbox it doesn't have enough of the shows I like that I sometimes find on Youtube, which are eventually removed. Anyway, here are the new episodes which are on Dailymotion, though they are uploaded in reverse. Just do a search for Mapp & Lucia and you'll find the other 2 episodes.

There is an audiobook of "Miss Mapp" read by Prunella Scales on YouTube I spotted an original cassette tape of the it selling on Amazon for a hundred bucks. Here it is for free:

I find it fascinating trying to figure out the economics of these peoples' lives. They barely have enough money to live on as they have to rent their houses out in the summer, and winning a couple of half crowns at bridge seems to fill them with joy. Yet at the same time they all have a cook and a housekeeper; perhaps more. Lucia is clearly wealthy, in fact, we know exactly how much money she has when she tells Georgie about the will. But Diva, the Bartletts, Mapp, Major Benjy (and of course, poor Puffin) all seem to have staffs but no money. How can they afford to pay these people?

Because cooks and housemaids earned very little money, R43, beyond receiving housing and sustenance. And, yes, this economy collapsed after WWII, which is why many Victorian mansions got abandoned, subdivided , or torn down. Same happened to 25% of the great estates.

I never quite got the opening sentence:

"Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older."

I know its funny but I don't fully understand why and how...can you rephrase? I'm not a native English speaker.

Anyone seen the version with Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor.

I'll take a stab at it R45: Most residents of Tilling would guess that Miss Mapp was 40 years old. She let them believe it because she was actually 42.

See, not as funny.

Thanks. R47. Maybe the sentence is not as funny. But others in that book certainly made me pee in my pants.

I thought there might be some double entendre that I don't get. The German translation does not even try to translate. It just says "Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty but was actually a year or two older."

R48 -- that's a very, very sad translation. The sentence is remarkable in that it does three things in few words: it tells you Mapp's age, the fact that she lies about it, and the fact that the villagers believe that lie -- all in one quick thrust.

The books are filled with sentences that demand you read them twice as Benson's narrative voice is ridiculously clever. I think they'd be very hard too translate into another language and keep their wit.

Interesting, R48...I cannot see the the villagers believe it though.

In any case, it's reassuring for us DLers that "anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody" keeps you "young and on the boil".

I have met many, many Miss Mapps here on DL.

In a minority opinion, I preferred the 2013?/2014? version.

I can only find 3 episodes on the Britbox, R51, is this all they made?

An early 16thC black-&-white 3-bedroom, Grade II listed house in Church Square, Rye, £575K. (For £1.3M, another period house is for sale in Mermaid Street.)

In case any of you are looking for a new, post-Covid situation.

I read these six novels (and the two short stories) a few years ago, just after I saw the new adaptation. I enjoyed them enough to read the entire collection start to finish without breaking them up. It's funny, in my head Lucia looks more like Anna Chancellor, and Miss Mapp looks more like Prunella Scales.

Anyway, I find both versions that were filmed have merits and detractions. I probably rewatch the newer one more often. The older one does have the element of "am dram" about it. As someone said above, McEwan works as Lucia because she is such a hammy actress, which is why I've never liked her in anything else. The newer version benefits from being actually set in the places the novels are set in.

For me, while I would say the novel Mapp & Lucia is deservedly the most famous, my other two favourites are Miss Mapp, and Lucia in London, two novels taking place before the two of them meet. Miss Mapp is the best portrayal of Tilling, I feel, and Lucia in London is great because without the awful Miss Mapp to sit in comparison to, we REALLY see how awful Lucia is as well.

As for the end of the series R29, that confused me too. I didn't actually notice them looking angrily at Mapp, but I remember Lucia says: "Dear Poppy" or something and the Duchess glares at her. I assume because Lucia is expressing a familiarity with the Duchess that is offensive? Then Mapp just looks put out and starts eating. I think it probably just wasn't directed that well, and really it's Mapp thinking: "Lucia gets away with it again". Something like that?

While I adore the first production, I also very m much enjoyed the 2014 version and wish they made more than the three episodes. Much as I love Prunella Scales in the role, Miranda Richardson as Mapp had a delicious, sharply honed edge.

I’ve been a major Mapp and Lucia fan since childhood. My mother introduced me to them, and we’ve visited Rye together several times.

Personally I much prefer the Tilling books, the characters feel better fleshed out. I don’t love the whole being lost at sea on a kitchen table thing.

It's been a long time since I last read the Mapp & Lucia books. One thing I recall being fascinated by was the obscure gradations in the class hierarchy. Miss Mapp and Lucia seem to live off their investments which gives them a higher status while the doctor who we might consider a member of the town elite appears to be a sort of better class tradesman.

I think it was quite common for the upper classes to have to rent their houses over summer before the second world war, and definitely further back, in Victorian times. In her autobiography, Agatha Christie talks about how she and her mother were left in bad financial straits after her father died and put the house up for rent for a period of each year and went and lived in the south of France (imagine a time where you could move to the south of France as a money-saving measure!). I think she was primarily educated in France too, and had her coming out in Cairo, as these were all cheaper options.

Of course, the upper class version of "poor" at the time, would've been more like: "we can't afford to live in the style we've become accustomed to" rather than being actually poor, I believe. They could've easily downsized their houses and got rid of staff, but the class structure would probably have meant this would've shut them out of certain parts of society which would've been seen to be worse than death.

We're a funny old species, humans.

Agreed with what was said above. Mapp and Lucia can stand on their own. When they finally meet it's a bit like the fifth installment in a franchise ( "Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man"). The kitchen-table-on-the-sea storyline is stupid, very "jump the shark". But it speaks for the quality of Benson as a writer that the Mapp + Lucia novels are still very funny and worth reading.

R59 again, actually the Roman Villa storyline in Lucia's Progress (1935) is very funny and late in the series.

How come "how tiresome" never became a DL meme?

"Tarsome," as Georgie would say.

The scene after they're married and both Georgie and Lucia are terrified that they might have to fuck the other person is literally laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Geraldine McEwan's costumes were extremely stylish and beautiful and loved her flapper's bob. My husband and I still ask each other how to say "tea" in Italian.

Loved Mrs. Wyse in her sable coat in "the Rolls" being driven a short distance so as not to have to walk on the cobblestones. Think in the book she sits on her budgerigar and kills it. Marion Mathis who played Mrs. Wyse also played Hilda Rumpole in a few episodes of Rumpole of the Old Bailey.

I seem to recall only the first 4 episodes which were shown on Public TV. I also purchased the other episodes but did not find them very good. È stato tanto tempo fa.

The antics of Lucia and Nigel, while playing the piano, in the 80s version are hilarious.

Lucia comes off like the lead of Jane Austen's Emma from a different time period. Always meddling and droning on about how superior she is by being so incredibly smart and cultured.

They play piano better in the series than in the book. The two together are a hoot. In the books she always plays the first movement of the Moonlight sonata and some easy Mozartino. It is implied that she isn’t that good, which is slightly lost in the series.

Molto conveniente.

[quote] Agatha Christie. . . and her mother. . . went and lived in the south of France (imagine a time where you could move to the south of France as a money-saving measure!).

Queen Mary (grandmother of QEII) and her family decamped to Florence for a number of years because her mother's extravagance led to a cash flow problem. It would be interesting to understand the economics of the time that the Continent was a way to evade creditors.

She liked to gamble the Duchess of Track did.

The Mapp & Lucia books were written by, for, and about old ladies....which makes them SUBLIME. People living lives where, essentially, NOTHING HAPPENS--isn't that true to the lives most of us lead? And yet...the DRAMA....

"Tacete -- le domestiche"

The main protagonists are middle aged, R69, in their 40-ies. And much of that is said also applies to social climbers and frauds even younger in the U.S,. e.g. in the fashion and media world.

I think it was pretty cunty from Mapp to demand from Lucia to pay for Mapp's gardener while he works mainly for Mapp and her produce selling endeavor.

And the drama about the Lobster a La Riseholme recipe.

No one has mentioned the lovely waltz that was the theme song of the 80s Mapp and Lucia.