Apple TV+ might not have the profile of Netflix or Stan, but there is one very good reason to sign up: Alena Smith’s comedy/drama Dickinson.
Taking the nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson as its subject, Dickinson tells the story of the young Emily Dickinson, before she became the much-mythologised ‘Woman in White’; the recluse who locked herself in her room to write. This Emily Dickinson is young, fun, and by no means reclusive, although she still does fake a deathly illness in order to gain a few days alone to write.
Starring Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson, Dickinson is not historical television as you know it. In one episode, the Dickinson siblings throw a house-party. “Let's get this party commenced!," cries one of their guests. Throw in a bit of opium, and suddenly Emily’s hallucinating a giant talking bee and her sister Lavinia is twerking to contemporary hip-hop.
Expect the unexpected
Dickinson, like one of my other top five picks The Great (Stan) reviewed here in our video, uses intentional anachronism to reimagine the life of Emily Dickinson. The first scene of the series starts conventionally enough: a voice-over gives us a brief history of Emily Dickinson’s life, and makes the point that none of her poems was published in her own lifetime. We then pan to Steinfeld as Dickinson, wearing white, writing in her bedroom in the early hours of the morning. So far, so predictable. Any expectation at all that we’re in a conventional biopic, however, is completely shattered when Lavinia Dickinson interrupts Emily to ask her to fetch water from the well.
“That’s bullshit,” Emily replies, slamming the door.
Dickinson has a young, cool, progressive queer sensibility, and that’s what makes it so fresh and interesting.
And so commences a series that revels in the use of contemporary language and music to reimagine the life of one of America’s most famous poets.
Alena Smith, the show’s creator, cleverly draws analogies between the America of the 1850s, on the brink of civil war, and today. In one scene, a group of young women hold a sleepover in the Dickinson homestead. While Mr Dickinson imagines they are talking about boys, they are actually discussing the abolitionist movement, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the Missouri Compromise; a sly hint that you underestimate this show at your own peril.
Poltical paralells, modern music
After Jane Humphreys notes the importance of blocking pro-slave legislation, Lavinia approvingly remarks, “You are, like, so woke”. In another scene, Emily and Austin Dickinson discuss how to deal with friends and relatives who don’t support the abolition of slavery, in a conversation obviously meant to draw to mind the vexed question of how to deal with Trump-voting relatives at Thanksgiving.
Don’t be fooled by the music and language, however; Dickinson knows its history. The show is grounded in extensive research on the life and poetry of Dickinson, and even throw-away jokes are lifted directly from Emily’s letters. Every episode is named and themed around one of Emily’s poems. The opening episode, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” explores the composition of that poem, which is linked to her visions of meeting Death (played, delightfully, by the American rapper Wiz Khalifa) in a spectral horse-drawn carriage. The show also takes on the contention already advanced in Dickinson scholarship that Emily and her sister-in-law Sue had a romantic relationship.
Dickinson has a young, cool, progressive queer sensibility, and that’s what makes it so fresh and interesting. A cliched literary biopic this is not. Dickinson is lots of fun, but it also offers a compelling, unique reading of Dickinson’s poetry that will appeal to both Dickinson fans and those new to her story.
As Dickinson’s Emily would say, “nailed it”.
Rating: 5 stars!
Stephanie Russo’s top 5 historical dramas
No. 1 Dickinson
Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Toby Huss, Jane Krakowski
The lowdown A twerking, swearing Emily Dickinson – the revered 19th-century American poet – shows that anachronism can be a very interesting way of approaching historical drama.
Where to watch Apple+ TV
No. 2 The Great
Starring Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult
The lowdown The royal woman who becomes Catherine the Great navigates the strange world of 18th-century Russia to rise to the position of Empress.
Where to watch Stan
No. 3 Reign
Starring Adelaide Kane, Megan Follows
The lowdown Follows the early exploits of Mary Queen of Scots, but is really about attractive teens in love triangles (think Gossip Girl) in 16th-century France.
Where to watch Stan
No. 4 The Tudors
Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Natalie Dormer, Henry Cavill
The lowdown A sexed-up Tudor history based on the reign of King Henry VIII, featuring the best on-screen portrayal of Anne Boleyn.
Where to watch Stan
No. 5 Outlander
Starring Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Tobias Menzies
The lowdown Claire Randall is a World War II nurse who accidentally travels back in time to 18th-century Scotland, where she meets and marries a Scottish Highlander and adventures ensue.
Where to watch Netflix
Dr Stephanie Russo, pictured above, is a senior lecturer in the Department of English. Her main area of research is English literature and culture in the early modern period and the eighteenth century, with special attention to: the history of the novel, especially women's novels. Her new book The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn - Representations of Anne Boleyn in Fiction and on the Screen | Stephanie Russo | Palgrave Macmillan will be published in November 2020.
