I keep a list of movies to watch. There are thousands of movies on the list and I will never watch all of them. I add titles to it all the time. Occasionally, due to laziness, I omit the year a movie was released when I add a movie. I did that with the film noir Body and Soul. So when I reached the “Bo” section of the list I didn’t know which Body and Soul I was looking for. The library had one, and it had Kristin Scott Thomas in it, so I naturally assumed it was the “movie” I had added to my list at some point in the past (not remembering anything about the film noir I had actually added to my list). This is how I ended up watching a British television mini series about a nun who tries to save the family business.

This mini series has some strengths: the acting, particularly Thomas herself, and the “adult themes” – can you imagine an American network financing a drama about a nun leaving the convent to save the family business in 1993? It’s unthinkable. But the show hasn’t dated well – things that were likely somewhat scandalous in 1993 are not scandalous in 2016 – and it is among the most British TV programs of British TV programs I have ever seen – for example the score feels like it was written by someone who took a class called “How to write a theme song for a British television program” and they play it to death. The source material is also sketchy, in that the overall moral appears to be that British textiles could really survive modernity if they weren’t being sabotaged by greedy people within the industry, something which feels…simplistic, to put it mildly.

But, as an adult-oriented television program from 1993, you could do worse.

6/10