Has anyone here watched the Cadfael television series?

[tomarin]

The Waltons was broadcast while I was a kid and it was very popular, but I never watched it as we were more of a “Little House on the Prairie” family. Maybe you should watch that next - just kidding.

Getting back to Cadfael and the decline of television, I’d say that in general television programming here in the U.S. at least is immensely less family-oriented than it was in the days when broadcast networks dominated the medium, and there are probably good and bad things about that change.

I haven’t seen the episode of the Outer Limits you cited but I will look for it as I’m sure it’s great, coming from Ellison.

 

[marytk]

I remember watching a couple Cadfael episodes on PBS. Interesting that you mention an episode that turned a real miracle into a fake miracle, as I recall one episode, The Holy Thief, that implies that supernatural forces helped to solve the mystery, the characters open a Bible to random pages, a ritual known as the “sortes Biblicae”, and the last verse inspires the murderer to confess.

Maybe there was meant to be some chicanery involved (Cadfael does resort to trickery in other stories to trick pious murderers into confession), but AFAIK the scene was played straight.

As to the TV episode involving a mercy killing, if the reference is to The Rose Rent, this was apparently added to the TV show but is absent from the book version. And even the TV version didn’t really implicate Cadfael himself, he just tells the wife that the medicine can be fatal in high doses. AFAIK, this wasn’t in a “wink and nod” kind of way.

And technically, giving medicine for the primary purpose of easing suffering is acceptable under Catholic medical ethics, even if it hastens death. The show doesn’t reveal if the wife just went home and poured the whole bottle down the husband’s throat (which would be mercy killing), or just had to keep increasing the dose until the dose required to ease suffering caused death.

Interesting to see that so far, no Catholic posters seem scandalized by the many “monk falls in love with lovely maiden and leaves the abbey to marry” side stories, but most of those romances did come from the books, and it is historically accurate that many men back then joined the Church for reasons other than a true vocation.

8Themore I think I believe the story was “The Pilgrim of Hate”. There is agreat gathering at theabbey. The primary story was about two pilgrims. THen there was a crippled young man there too. In the book he IS crippled Cadfael can give him relief from pain but not much else He is healed with intercession to their favorite Saint

In theshow Cadfael can’t see anything really wrong with the youmg man. Then the kid fakes being healed

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I just watched one of the DVDs, and I thought it was fantastic. The premise is entirely ridiculous: he’s a medievel monk, and a homicide detective!, but the lead actor, Derek Jacobi, is so thoroughly likeable that it somehow doesn’t seem that absurd. There are a bunch of episodes I haven’t watched yet, but based on what I have seen, I highly recommend it. It’s very enjoyable:

imdb.com/title/tt0108717/

amazon.com/Cadfael-Complete-Collection-Derek-Jacobi/dp/B003YCI1UC

I watched the first show. Interesting, but too gruesome for the likes of me.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

Just wanted to say: Yup. It was STRANGE without being repulsive.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

8Themore I think I believe the story was “The Pilgrim of Hate”. There is agreat gathering at theabbey. The primary story was about two pilgrims. THen there was a crippled young man there too. In the book he IS crippled Cadfael can give him relief from pain but not much else He is healed with intercession to their favorite Saint

In theshow Cadfael can’t see anything really wrong with the youmg man. Then the kid fakes being healed

I didn’t see that episode but I did look it up and at least per Wikipedia (which I use with a saltshaker handy, but is usually pretty accurate when it comes to popular media), that episode took many liberties with the book, not just the character of the crippled young man, Rhun. It was also, possibly not co-incidentally, the last episode to air.

In general, I do think the series was fair to the Church, portraying Cadfael and his brothers as generally sincere in their devotion, though some are motivated more by ambition than piety, and I did notice that Cadfael often acts to cover up incidents that would hurt the credibility of the Church (especially in A Morbid Taste for Bones).

While I suppose some of this could be played up for the TV version, reading summaries of the books indicate that many of these incidents come from the books themselves, which were written in the 1970s. So it’s not like Ellis Peters was trying to allude to the sex abuse scandal, though I do wonder if the people who adapted the stories to TV in the 1990s did.

Though even the “private eye covers up identity of murderer out of pity or some other personal reason” plot twist is somewhat of a convention in the British PI genre; Poirot let a lot of murderers escape legal justice. I also recall Sherlock Holmes letting a murderer get away, because the man he killed was also a murderer. One story even seems to insinuate that he and Watson might be guilty of murder themselves, though Watson attributes the murder to a mysterious veiled woman.

 

[marytk]

I didn’t see that episode but I did look it up and at least per Wikipedia (which I use with a saltshaker handy, but is usually pretty accurate when it comes to popular media), that episode took many liberties with the book, not just the character of the crippled young man, Rhun. It was also, possibly not co-incidentally, the last episode to air.

In general, I do think the series was fair to the Church, portraying Cadfael and his brothers as generally sincere in their devotion, though some are motivated more by ambition than piety, and I did notice that Cadfael often acts to cover up incidents that would hurt the credibility of the Church (especially in A Morbid Taste for Bones).

While I suppose some of this could be played up for the TV version, reading summaries of the books indicate that many of these incidents come from the books themselves, which were written in the 1970s. So it’s not like Ellis Peters was trying to allude to the sex abuse scandal, though I do wonder if the people who adapted the stories to TV in the 1990s did.

Though even the “private eye covers up identity of murderer out of pity or some other personal reason” plot twist is somewhat of a convention in the British PI genre; Poirot let a lot of murderers escape legal justice. I also recall Sherlock Holmes letting a murderer get away, because the man he killed was also a murderer. One story even seems to insinuate that he and Watson might be guilty of murder themselves, though Watson attributes the murder to a mysterious veiled woman.

Yes that last book also switched whow was “the good pilgrim and who was bad in the two that were main characters. Other shows were truer to the books. (at least didn’t completley change the story with the same characters”
In the books I felt Cadfael had a true calling and true devotion. I did’t get that as much from the shows, I agree that yes there are a lot of plot lines etc that just seem to be part of the mystery genre.
Now I may see if I can read some of these again.

 

[didymus]

Yes, I wondered the same thing and I was only ten or 11 at the time.
I wonder the same thing about the State of the Union address – is it smart to have the whole gov’t sitting in the same room at the same time? Why doesn’t the Presidnet just give the speech from the Oval Office?

[/quote]