Fanny Price a Tart?

Well, I don’t think so … not in the wildest stretch of the imagination could Jane Austen’s most prim and proprietous heroine be considered a woman of loose morals, yet Billie Piper the actress who portrayed Fanny in the 2007 adaptation of Mansfield Park is being tagged a tart by her elderly country neighbors in Midhurst, West Sussex where she lives with her husband, actor Laurence Fox (Mr. Wisley in Becoming Jane) and their young son Winston.

Mail Online is reporting that in an interview for the February issue of Marie Claire magazine, the 27-year old actress revealed that "A few of the older locals actually believe I'm a whore," because of her role in ITV’s and Showtime’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl based on the exploits of a real-life call girl Belle de Jour.

"They love Laurence because he's in Lewis (Inspector Lewis in the US), and his fan club are basically in their mid-sixties and upwards. (Ouch – that made his fans who are not senior citizens feel rather ancient). They love him. It's sickening. They follow him around, they want to mother him. I mean, there are places he can't go - like Mecca Bingo or the bowling green - but he loves it. Then they look at me and are like, "That slag! How could you dirty yourself with her? She's corrupted you.""

I guess Billie needs to send her neighbors the DVD of Mansfield Park to redeem her reputation. Fanny Price has been accused of being a prig, but never a tart!

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

Masterpiece Mystery Inspector Lewis Concludes with The Point of Vanishing on Sunday

The second season of the Inspector Lewis mysteries concludes with ‘The Point of Vanishing’ on Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm - 10:30 pm ET on PBS. It’s been a great run of detective drama and dishy DS Hathaway (Laurence Fox), but unfortunately we have come to the seventh episode and must patiently wait another year for series three. *sigh* So fellow Gentle Readers and detective mystery fans here is a final brief description of the episode from the Masterpiece Mystery website. I wonder if it will be a cliff hanger or elude to more mysteries of the two detectives personal lives. This episode has a religion slant, and of course murder!

Steven Mullan is found dead in his bathtub, the scalding water indicative of the white-hot rage that motivated the murder. Lewis recognizes Mullan as having been recently released from prison after having tried to kill celebrity atheist Tom Rattenbury while driving drunk. Mullan's sentence may be over, but have the scars healed for the Rattenburys, especially daughter Jessica who remains in a wheelchair from the incident? Lewis and Hathaway find a postcard at the crime scene of a Renaissance painting inscribed with the words, "It was no dream." But the case is about to take a surreal, dream-like twist, leaving Lewis and Hathaway drowning in questions about crimes of the past and the present.

Read the full synopsis (spoilers ahead)
Read the full cast and crew listing

Last week’s episode ‘The Quality of Mercy’ revealed who killed Inspector Lewis’s wife! After five plus years of Lewis searching for clues, the killer virtually fails into DS Hathaway’s path in an round-about way. The developing relationship between the two detectives is quite interesting and makes this drama more than just a whodunit. If you missed this episode, you can watch it online on the PBS website through Sunday, October 18th, 2009, ET.

Really sad to see the series end. The combination of Oxford University locations, detective drama and literary connections makes this series a cut above in my book and definitely my favorite series of the Masterpiece Mystery season.

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose