British crime writer Ann Cleeves was forced to be a writer. She really had no choice, she says. Married to an ornithologist, living on a remote island in England, she says, “We were the only people living there. It was a nature reserve. He was the warden of the nature reserve. No means of electricity or water. And if you're not into birds, there isn’t much else to do. And that was a great chance to write.”
Of course, the author of the series of books, “Shetland,” “Vera” and “The Long Call,” had always been a writer without really knowing it. “I can remember before I could read and write running a narrative in the third person in my head, describing what I was doing. I was always an observer and somebody on the outside looking in,” she says.
“My dad was a village school master and he taught me. And it’s not much fun being taught by your dad in very small community — nobody really wants to be your friend. Again, I was a bit of an outsider. So I think I was always going to write, but I really had the time and the incentive to do it when we were on this very small island.”
The television versions of “Shetland,” “Vera” and “The Long Call” are streaming now on BritBox. Unlike many authors, Cleeves, 67, is delighted with these adaptations.
“I made up my mind right from the beginning that I wouldn’t meddle because I don’t know what makes good television, and I suspected — and I think I was probably right — that they probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway. So it would save me a lot of anxiety and stress. I really believed that they understood the books when I signed the contracts, and they agreed to film where the books were set — which was enormously important. After that I’m really not very precious about them.”
The setting proves crucial for Cleeves because when she’s conjuring a new work she doesn’t think of the plot or the characters first — it’s always the place. “I need to know where it’s going to be set before I can do anything else,” she says.
“I think we are a product of where we grow up, the children we played with, the streets where we played, the view that we had from our windows. I think all that contributes to who we are.”
One of her most beloved characters is the middle-aged, frumpy detective Vera Stanhope of the “Vera” series. Cleeves says she stumbled on the character simply by accident. “Vera appeared very suddenly in a book that wasn’t going to have a detective in it,” she says.
“And I think it was Raymond Chandler who said if you're stuck with a story, have a guy burst through the door with a gun. I don’t do guns, but I was writing a funeral scene in the first book, ‘The Crow Trap,’ and I just had the church door open and in came Vera Stanhope — it was one of those miraculous moments. She was there. I had her name. I described her looking more like a fat lady than a detective.”
Cleeves didn’t pursue the usual path to a literary life. Before she entered college, the 17-year-old did social work in London. One of her cases was a motherless family living in the projects. Cleeves found herself caring for the children while the father struggled to provide. “Then when I went off to university to read (study) English it seemed a bit unreal to me to be sitting around talking about poetry when I’d seen a bit of life,” she recalls.
“I was very arrogant, I think. I thought I could read books anywhere; I didn’t need a teacher to make me do it. Quite by chance I got chatting with a friend of a friend in a pub and he was going off to be assistant warden in Shetland. I said I would like to spend the summer there and he said, ‘Well, if you're serious, they’re desperate for a cook.’ So you do that sort of thing when you're young — I went off to be assistant cook in Fair Island.”
She couldn’t really cook, she says. “But it was mostly peeling potatoes and cleaning bathrooms, and I could do that. I loved it. I loved being on the island and it changed the whole direction of my life. That’s where I met my husband. He was a bird-watcher and it prompted me to write about Shetland — which changed my writing career and I’ve still got great friends there.”
She and Tim, the birdwatcher, have two daughters. Even though her books began to sell, there were some hard times ahead. “My husband had bouts of depression and was later diagnosed as bipolar and there were a couple of times he had to go into hospital,” she says.
“And that was pretty tough with our children and having this man who was almost a stranger when he came home. But we’ve got a wonderful health service and they diagnosed him properly, and once he was getting medication it was getting my husband back, a much more gentle and relaxed husband.”
Sighing, she adds, “We had difficult times, but we got over them and got through them and what helped me get through the bad times was writing and reading, losing myself in fiction for a bit.
One of those bad times was the death of her husband four years ago. “Because it was very unexpected and he was the same age as I am now, which was a bit weird. We’d been together for 40 years, we’d traveled together, we had a lot of fun together, now I'm having to learn to be on my own. And that’s not easy. But I do have my daughters, grandchildren and lots of good friends.”
Nat Geo examines anthrax panic
People may not remember, but soon after the 9/11 tragedy another began metastasizing around the nation. The deadly bacteria anthrax was being mailed to innocent people, and some were dying. National Geographic’s next edition of its “Hot Zone” series is revisiting that outbreak with “The Hot Zone: Anthrax,” premiering Nov. 28.
The six-part series stars Daniel Dae Kim as an FBI special agent and Tony Goldwyn as a microbiologist involved in the search for the perpetrator. The timing was perfect, says David Zucker, one of the show’s producers.
“This was a very public, horrific series of events that actually extended for seven years, in terms of the investigation,” he says.
“And so, it was a fascinating undertaking. Both because it's something that was familiar to us but the result of which and the frankly surprising, shocking course of investigation and personalities involved are greatly unknown to people. So it was one of those unique opportunities to examine a period in history that had a profound effect both on the heels of 9/11, both politically, socially and otherwise,” he says.
“How something like this transpired, how it came to pass, and ultimately, what the resolution is — which I bet if you asked most people in this country — they have no awareness of.”
Daniel Dae Kim, who is best known for his performances on “Hawaii Five-0” and “Lost,” says it was the script that first intrigued him. “It’s just about stories well told,” he says.
“And both Tony and I, we’ve been around the block a little bit, and I think we both would agree that we’ll go to where the good stories are -- whether it’s film or television, theater, anywhere.”
Goldwyn (“Scandal”) found the job unique. “It was a very interesting collaboration, especially during COVID because we were all siloed and alone, and it was quite good for this project, for me at least,” he says.
“You really had nothing else you could do other than bury yourself in this. But we were all communicating via email, then phone, and Zoom, and then when we saw each other we were completely covered in masks. It is quite a bizarre way to work, but it ended up being very creative.”
Comedian cooks up comedy
Stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco is hosting his very own cooking show, “Well Done with Sebastian Maniscalco” over at the Food Network and Discovery+ beginning Tuesday. That’s curious because Maniscalco admits he can’t cook.
During the COVID outbreak Maniscalco says he found time to whip up a little TV show. “I think a lot of people, especially after what we’ve just been through the last 16 months, are really, really looking to laugh,” he says.
“And I’ve seen that on tour over the last two-and-a-half months. People are literally dying to laugh, and the response has been really, really great.”
Maniscalco says he doesn’t fret about whether his routine will prompt laughs. “I don’t really worry about anything. As soon as I start worrying about what I’m talking about, what I’m saying, it ain’t funny. As soon as you start editing yourself and questioning what you think is the right thing to say, I think you lose who you truly are. And I think that’s what the audience is gravitating towards.
“So I don’t know how to be anybody else. So when I do, whether it be stand-up comedy or a TV show like ‘Well Done’ or a podcast or whatever it might be, I’m just giving my take on the world. And if people like it, great; if people don’t then, hey, it’s not for them. So I never really worry about any of that.”
Fashion house gets the once-over
Big time fashion gurus are juicy targets on TV and film. We had “Versace,” then “Halston,” and on Nov. 24 “The House of Gucci” opens in theaters with a star-glutted cast.
Ridley Scott directs along with Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino and Salma Hayek.
Hayek, who has explored a diverse range of filmmaking since she started in Mexican soaps, says, “Everything in life is about choices. And it’s about whether you can live with your choices. At the end of the day what makes you strong is how much you respect yourself and who you are — not necessarily from an egotistical place but from a place of self-dignity in a way.
“Maybe to the eyes of everyone else in the world it was smarter to be famous in Mexico doing soaps, but I knew that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to do films. So in my values, it was OK not to be famous and not to make it but to know I didn’t settle for something that was OK in everyone else’s eyes, but it was not OK in my heart. I found it was more fulfilling for me to know that at least in life I gave it a chance to give it my very best shot at something that was meaningful to me and doing what I really wanted to do. And it was not an easy journey.”
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