Of Swords and Parasols

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Also, can someone verify for me if this is the complete book series?  I find it much easier to watch soething with unlikable characters as a main focus than to read something with unlikable characters as a main focus, but I'm curious.

Netflix just told me that they’re shipping series 2 to me this week, which made me realize that I forgot to post on these episodes after I watched them.

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Despite the abundance of unlikable characters, this was pretty engrossing, and I find myself curious about the books.  Does anyone have opinions about the longer 60s version?

I finished the first disc of the 2002 version of The Forsyte Saga, which is pretty much a Victorian soap opera.  I...I think I want to watch the rest purely in hope of seeing horrible things happen to one of the main characters.  And I really do try to avoid character hate whenever possible.  I actually found the first episode kind of boring for most of it, and so ended up confusing two characters and thinking they were one. 

The first is Young Jolyon.  He was making eyes at his daughter's governess to the point where his wife-Frances-and father-Elder Jolyon, I think-told him to fire her because it was indecent.  His response was to go upstairs and end up in bed with said governess.  Then go confront his wife, accompanied by the governess, and they were all "yeah, well, now we actually have had sex and we're in love so I'm leaving you and our daughter and you can face society by yourself."  Which...uhm...I could understand deciding to leave your wife who you got along well with but didn't love, if you fell in love in a time where divorce wasn't that easy (possible, but not easy), but the bit where you take the woman you just had sex with in with you when you tell her?  (Especially since, if I'm remembering how these things work correctly, you were probably having sex in the room next to your very ill daughter.)  And your wife has to listen to this woman make justifications?  I think that kills any chances of understanding or sympathy. 

Then there's Soames, who is Young Jolyon's cousin.  There was a time jump, after which Young Jolyon had a beard, and I initially confused these two characters as being the same.  Keep in mind that, at that point, the plot had been "guy dumps wife and daughter for governess," so I was really only half watching.  Soames is a hateful bastard who treats everyone around him like crap.  He's also obsessed with perfection and owning things, so when he meets the beautiful Irene, he decides to make her his.  Irene can smell "People are possessions!" a mile away and sensibly rejects him.  Until her stepmother locks her out of the house in the rain for it because she wants Soames's money.  Thankfully, she takes precautions to make sure she doesn't become impregnanted by his reptilian demon spawn.  He says she can leave him if she isn't happy in the marriage, but he lies like an evil lying thing.

Honestly, Damian Lewis is either an amazing actor, or a horrible human being.  You have to be one of the two to play such a horrible character.  (There have been characters I've hated more, but part of the hatred there was the fact that I was expected to like them.)

Anyway, still kinda not interested at that point.  Then the show started paying attention to the rest of the Forsytes.

Ok, may I just say that these two episodes left me firmly convinced that every man in England between the ages of 10 and 55 needed to be shot?

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I don't think I've ever wanted to watch more of something where I hate so many characters, and like so few.  Possibly, I live in hopes that the women will dump the men and go open a commune or something.