"It's a mystery, Mollycoddle! You love mysteries, don't you?" - Haverford Downs (John Gielgud) to his daughter, Molly Pargeter (Susan Fleetwood)
Summer's Lease DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Molly Pargeter (Susan Fleetwood) dreams of spending a month in Tuscany. She's even found the perfect place, La Felicità, a rambling old house owned by the Kettering family. Or is it that the villa has found her? She loves its picturesque location, is intrigued by the absent landlord's fondness for paintings, and is even amused by the typewritten notes taped around the home which offer oddly specific tips (unplug the fridge before using a hairdryer, don't flush the toilet more than twice in any 15 minute period, and all dinners should be eaten on the veranda to classical music).
If only her family shared her enthusiasm. None of them are too keen on leaving London for the wilds of Italy. Her husband Hugh (Michael Pennington) is a divorce lawyer who would prefer to stay at home where he can continue to help his female clients get over their wrecked marriages. Their daughters, fifteen year old Henrietta (Caroline Waldron), twelve year old Samantha (Suzanne Hay), and four year old Jaqueline (Sammy Glenn) don't want to waste their summer vacation in the boonies while their friends live it up in the city. Only one person is anxious to make the trip, and he's the one person Molly doesn't want to come along: her father, magazine columnist Haverford Downs (John Gielgud). It seems that the horny old devil has discovered that Nancy Leadbetter (Rosemary Leach), a wealthy former flame, lives in the vicinity of La Felicità, and he hopes to rekindle their affair.
Once the family arrives in Italy, Molly quickly discovers that there is more to La Felicità than meets the eye. Curious about her absentee landlord, she begins to inquire about him. No one will give her a straight answer. He is either on vacation, away on business, or has simply disappeared. A car seems to be keeping the house under surveillance. One of the family's new acquaintances dies under mysterious circumstance. Molly finds an anonymous note that seems to suggest a murder plot. When the water supply to La Felicità is suddenly cut off, the amateur sleuth wonders if all these pieces are somehow part of the same puzzle.
Summer's Lease, a 1989 BBC miniseries that aired on Masterpiece Theatre in the US, is no ordinary mystery. Don't expect fast-paced depictions of crimes and stunning plot twists. The mystery unfolds so leisurely that at times we are left to wonder if the entire thing is simply the result of Molly's overactive imagination, spurred on by boredom and a Sherlock Holmes book she finds in the master bedroom. Indeed, the very ordinariness of La Felicità's puzzles is what makes the miniseries so special. What happened to Mr. Kettering? Why does he insist on renting his villa only to families that have three daughters? Even the slightest of the clues found by Molly aren't what they seem to be, and they expertly play off of her expectations.and ours.
The miniseries is also just as much a travelogue as it is a mystery, taking great delight in La Felicità, Italy, and Italian culture. Much of Part Three focuses on the Palio horse race in Sienna, an annual event that has taken place for centuries. Molly is on the verge of solving the mystery in Part Four, but the episode's emotional highlight comes in an extended sequence devoted to the historic paintings found on the road to Urbino. Chances are C.S.I. would never slow down long enough to dwell lovingly on paintings of the Madonna, or of Christ rising from the dead.
The cast of characters is just as colorful as the Italian setting. Haverford is an amusingly lascivious rapscallion. The self-proclaimed "old fart" is so randy and over-the-top - and Gielgud's portrayal so dead-on - that laughs are guaranteed almost every time he speaks. Fleetwood is perfect as Molly, a complexly simple character who yearns for love and excitement. Even the secondary characters are interesting. Haverford's great love, Nancy Leadbetter, claims not to remember him. Her odd houseguest, Prince Tosti-Castelnuovo (Feodor Chaliapin), is a cadaverous Bela Lugosi sound-alike who has a spider fixation. And many of the Tuscan residents encountered by Molly are simultaneously sinister and harmless. They could be perfectly normal, friendly people, but then again.
The four episodes that make up the miniseries are divided onto two discs. The discs are housed in two standard-sized keepcases which slide into a cardboard slipcover. The fronts of the keepcases and the cardboard slipcover all feature the same image of John Gielgud and Susan Fleetwood lounging behind La Felicità. The back of each keepcase includes brief synopses of the episodes found on the DVDs. Viewers may want to avoid reading these synopses ahead of time. While they do not reveal major developments, part of the pleasure of Summer's Lease is in discovering even its simplest plot points.
The menus - which feature the same photo that graces the cover, accompanied by the series' operatic Chameleon-sung theme song - are simple and functional. Viewers can choose to watch an entire episode or can jump directly to a scene using the "Scene Selection" menu.
