Ramu Sood (Alyy Khan) being brought out to be hanged (he is absolutely innocent of any crime and everyone knows this)
Dear Friends and readers,
A few days ago I provided a framework, perspective, synopsis and then summaries and commentary for the first half of the first season of the superlative Indian Summers. Now we turn to the second half of the first season, dominated by the mysterious murder of Jaya (Hasina Haque) from having been stabbed and drowned (by whom we are not quite sure even at the end of the season). The accusation is imposed on Ramu Sood; we watch how this comes about, the trial, and its conclusion in the British power murdering Sood. They have colluded to exclude from evidence that Ralph Whelan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) was Adam, her boy’s father and stood to lose everything if Jaya persisted in following him about with the son. It’s not that the idea that the parentage of Adam is the key to the murder simply does not surface. This truth is repressed by those who know and lies about Sood are provided as a distraction from Ralph.
It’s shocking even today as it is made plain the British are doing this to rid themselves of a wealthy, proud “trouble-making” landlord. We listen to several characters tell Sood’s one full supporter, Ian McCleod (Alexander Cobb), it does not matter if Sood is guilty or innocent. Sood is the kind of person the British want dead. They resent — Cynthia had already thrown Ian out of the club for working for Sood — and fear him. Sood tells McCleod the moral of his story is “keep your head down” if you are not a white and powerful male.
Jaya and Adam – she persistently abducts Adam from the missionary school where he was taken after rescue in the first episode so as to bring Adam before Ralph
Within this over-arching story, we watch Aafrin Dalal (Nikesh Patel) become bitterly disillusioned with Ralph. At the end of the season Aafrin realizes that Ralph will do nothing to prevent the gov’t from hanging Sood. Aafrin had assumed that Ralph would recommend mercy in the form of a prison sentence and then leniency in later years to cut down the sentence. Ralph at first writes a letter to that effect, but Ralph, after letting it stay publicly on his desk, destroys it and instead lets the death penalty take its course immediately. We also see the full criminality and viciousness of Cynthia’s (Julie Walters) character, who beyond lying on the stand to convict Sood, is responsible for the death of Eugene (Edward Hogg) Mathers, Madeleine’s (Olivia Grant) beloved brother and plots to persuade Olivia to return to the US and never return (despite Ralph’s determination to marry Olivia in order to give some moral pattern to his existence). Ian McCleod (Alexander Cobb) emerges as a hero risking all to try to save Sood, and when he does not, siding with the Indians to rally viscerally against the injustice in a funeral.
I admit I had not realized that WETA has placed online recaps of all the episodes of the first and second seasons, and left them available (here is one place you can reach these), but as these are not easy to click on in chronological order and are told neutrally (though concisely, concretely, accurately) I will carry on providing summaries and evaluations of the series.
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Episode 6 brings together all the threads we had come to understand in a violent open near murder by Ralph of a Irish soldier-hunter, Captain Billie Farquhar (Jamie McLaughlin), a character out of Kipling, because Farquhar is threatening Alice (Jemima West) with blackmail (she can pay him off with sex). We also see in a memory flashback the death of Jaya — who dies screaming, screaming. Her body shows multiple stabs (plus much abuse from earlier years as an outcast beggar).
Jaya had started to show herself, to come to Ralph’s house and with Adam, their son; he goes to her and proposes that if she agrees to go somewhere else, he would support her, but he appears to do nothing about this. Leena Prasad (Amber Rose Revah) as the missionary teacher who loves Adam repeatedly wrests Adam back from this half-mad mother: Java threatens the boy, puts him at risk; she confides to Ralph that beyond her life in the streets, all she has known from men since Ralph abandoned her has been abuse. At the end of Episode 6 Jaya is apparently waiting for Ralph by the river (it seems like an appointment was made) and looks eager and then (apparently it’s not Ralph) because this person is doing something which horrifically frightens her, and next thing we see her drowning and screaming.
A second thread is that of McCleod’s relationship to Ramu Sood. Jaya has strayed into Sood’s house and finding a woman’s beautiful wedding clothes in a closet, takes them and puts them on. These turn out to be Sood’s dead wife’s dress, and he becomes very angry. Sood is a lonely man who sits on his porch, half asleep with a gun across his knees — we learn in the trial his wife had died in childbirth. The gun shows he feels that his life is continually under threat. Now it was McCleod who, sorry for Jaya, let her work in what were McCleod’s uncle’s and are now Sood’s tea fields. McCleod’s good nature and naivete contribute to the tragedy. Sood had looked at her impersonally and thought she would not be an effective worker and felt she might bring trouble. By this time Sood is training McCleod and they are working together.
In David Gilmore’s The British in India (cited in my first blog on Indian Summers) Gilmore says that a disproportionate number of Scots people came to India for work and became successful businessmen working closely with the Indians. We see the two men forming a friendship, Sood training McCleod: a mentor-father relationship forms. They sit and drink and Sood tells of the beggar woman and wedding dress. Sood invites McCleod to stay, but McCleod insists on going home alone and hears the screaming nearby at the river — having seen Sood on the porch waving to him a few minutes before.
Farquhar’s first appearance: he is showing the ladies the head of the snake which he just killedA separate thread is the discomfort and on again off again relationship of Alice and Aafrin. The absence-presence of her husband, Charlie, looms again. Irish Captain Billie Farquhar (James Maclachlan) comes out of nowhere to shoot and kill a snake who terrifies Madeleine, Ronnie Keane (Rick Warden) and maybe frightens Alice (Jemima West), all taking a sort of stroll in the bush (as it were). He is Irish, and presents himself as a mountain climber needing permission to climb the Himalayas. We are told this climb is extremely dangerous physically, and it quickly emerges that in fact Farquhar is not there to climb these mountains: when Ralph gives permission, Farquhar suggests Ralph wants to get rid of him. He reveals he is a friend of Alice’s husband, Charlie, and soon Alice is again in a abject position. She is susceptible to bullying; is bullied continually by Sarah Raworth (Fiona Glascott) who also knows of the marriage and her flight, and threatens to reveal she is not a widow but has (in law) kidnapped her son.
Sarah and Alice — this frenemy relationship is continuous — Alice is actually the friend of Leena, and tries to help at the missionary schoolRalph watches from afar, at first thinking Alice is “leading Farquhar on,” and when she denies this, Ralph literally throws Farquhar down the stairs, bashing Farquhar’s head on a wall in such a way as possibly to cause a serious concussion. Farquhar leaves in haste, but not before he has threatened to tell Charlie what actually is the condition of Alice and reminded her the boy belongs to the father.
A lighter note: Dougie Raworth’s (Craig Parkinson) keeping to his wife, puts her in a better temper and we see her for once on a roof accepting drink from her son and husband (playfully) instead of enacting incessant bitterness, aggression and pride and snobbery, envy, and spite.
That Ralph can risk murder of Farquhar shows his violence. We see him remove Madeleine from tea at one point and he forcibly in effect rapes her from the back (buggers) her and we see her submit to the pain (no pregnancy would happen). Then Ralph’s close servant, Bhupinder (Ash Nair) goes after his wife, Sumitra (Anitha Abdul Hamid?) who is Alice’s servant and nanny to Alice’s baby son, Percy — from the back, but she has the courage to refuse him and run away. We do see Ralph grieve over Jaya’s body in the morgue, but continue the lies he does not know who she is.
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Complicity would be a perfect title for S1, Episode 7. We see how Superintendent Rowntree (Guy Williams) leaps on McCleod’s naive bringing forth of information about a link between Jaya and Ramu Sood — specifically her taking his wife’s wedding dress and his anger over this — to accuse Sood of premeditated murder. Then the complicities slowly emerge:
Ian (Alexander Cobb) in his flat realizing he has been badly used
It takes time for Leena to realizes Raworth is holding back information which might help Sood: Raworth and she both know that Jaya was Adam’s mother, but more importantly that Ralph is the father. Raworth keeps saying he is not telling to protect Adam; but the reality is he is afraid to expose the Private Secretary for fear of reprisals. Ralph has sent him a huge check for the school (soon after Jaya began to be seen around the compound). Our respect for Raworth ought to go way down: his abjection before his wife is matched by his cowardice before British authorities.
Cynthia keeps up the drumbeat of false stories, including that Sood killed Armitage, when it was Armitage who attacked Sood. But then (like Leena slowly about Raworth) I realized Cynthia suspected Ralph did it and he suspects her. So Sood is a screen for both of them. (What do they care about him?) Aafrin seems as yet indifferent to what is happening in the trial, caring only that the Muslim girl (Sati) he found himself engaged to (through his father’s behavior) lied to him and endangered his position as a trusted Parsi among the whites.
Sood cries after being beaten into confession — as he says his crime was to behave as if he were equal; he should have kept his head down and not taken over the tea plantation. It ends on Ralph also (yet another person) telling McCleod it’s no use to offer any alibi, you will not be thanked. I did not realize that the whites and the passive obedient Indian community really meant to hang Sood when they knew it was a false charge probably because such a program as this would have poetic justice (so I thought).
The players — one of the more savagely ironic stills in the seriesThere is a play within the play going on: the British are putting on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, with Cynthia as Lady Bracknell. Events happening within the play and the behavior of the players to one another reveal their characters and parallel events leading up to the trial. Cynthia tries to win McCleod back by welcoming him into the club and giving him a major part in the play (one she removes from Eugene Mathers out of spite), but he gradually sees through this and returns to the police to tell what he saw and insist he is Sood’s alibi. The large analogy (not obvious and thus probably lost to an American audience) is that Cynthia is Lady Bracknell and cares intensely about Ernest, who in this paradigm would be an allusion to the orphaned Ralph.
The larger event referred as happening off stage is Ghandi’s threat to go on a hunger strike and Ralph objects to staging the play as bad politics (the British will look bad); but the Viceroy (Patrick Malahide) who has a major role, and is much flattered throughout, insists the play go on (in effect he threatens Ralph with loss of his position). Ralph fears this ignoring the suffering of thousands and Ghandi’s symbolic recognition will cost them the parliamentary votes they need. Viceroy laughs at him.
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Episode 8: The Trial. The first time I watched the framing (very weak) and then trial and conviction of Ramu Sood, I didn’t realize quite how “guilty” was a foregone conclusion. The Indian judge had never for a moment considered coming up with a “not guilty” verdict. I admit that still I couldn’t take in that in the next episode this innocent man would be killed before our very eyes.
Raworth suddenly standing up at the trial, stopping Leena (whose POV we are in) from giving evidence that Ralph Whelan is Adam’s father
Some striking moments: Raworth protected Ralph Whelan so closely and then sent back Ralph’s check. Raworth cannot face his own lack of integrity, but to send the money back is as useless (one might say) as both Ian and Leena’s evidence on behalf of Sood in the trial. When Raworth signals to Leena on the stand that she should not utter Whelan’s name that made her evidence no evidence. She has come courageously to the Indian lawyer to tell him that Adam is Jaya’s son and that an important part of the evidence is who the father is. But on the stand she does not identify Ralph. She also made the mistake of criticizing Jaya (ironic that this is used against her). The Indian lawyer on behalf of Sood, suggests that she herself might have murdered the boy because she so yearned to be Adam’s mother, and then the unscrupulous British lawyer repeats the idea. So she is triply betrayed: by both lawyers and in effect by Raworth. Raworth fails Leena as McCleod does not fail Sood. Now whether telling the truth would not harm Leena, we cannot know ….
The worst villainess of the piece is Cynthia Coffin — ruthless, supposedly for Whelan, she ceaselessly blackens Sood. When it’s insinuated that Raworth might be Adam’s father, she says oh no, it was Armitage — no sleaze is beneath her. She (we realize wrongly) fears that Raworth might tell the truth were he accused – and the accusation is obvious when he stands up in the trial to stop Leena’s evidence. I probably should reread The Importance of Being Earnest to understand Lady Bracknell’s full relationship with Ernest; it is parallel with Cynthia’s with Ralph. She has now consigned Eugene to an early death by putting him in her club basement because she wants to get rid of both Mathers people and find for Ralph a much wealthier wife.
I did begin to feel there is misogyny in the way Cynthia is continually fingered as so powerful and so cruel. Sarah Raworth’s behavior reinforces this misogyny. She seems to vomit during the trial when Raworth stands up to defend Leena – all she cares for is is she acceptable by these racist imperialists. She comes home after the trial exposes Raworth and Leena has having some relationship to Jaya and Adam, and she rages at Raworth on the grounds she will now be stigmatized and excluded again. She tells him how boring, boring are his sermons. Against this is that when Aafrin breaks with Sati and tries to reach Alice, we are to feel for Sati who now will have her reputation utterly compromised — so not a misogynous script.
Sooni seated by the Indian lawyer; the snide insinuating English lawyer badgering Sood to confess …Also the character of Sooni (Aysha Kala) shows us a feminist paradigm — as does the story of Alice who has no rights or power or ability to earn an income it seems. Sooni supports Sood, helps the Indian lawyer, gets McCleod to the court sober to give his evidence on behalf of Sood. Sood tries to persuade Ian not to give evidence; Sood pretends hostility to Ian, and insults him, and in Ian’s emotional hurt, Ian runs off to get drunk. Sood is the unselfish good man — who understands the way the Raj works but (as he said) assumed he could be an exception. We see him on the stand treated disrespectfully and played with by the lawyer — and realize the full extent of his personal tragedy: a man who lose a beloved wife and child only a few months ago.
It’s not an overtly violent, over dramatic ratcheted up drama — it is utterly believable. At the end the last shot of the episode is of Ralph’s feet. The British lawyer used as evidence incriminating Sood that a filthy old sandal was found near the river. The lawyer scoffed at the idea a British man could wear sandals. But could this be Ralph’s sandal? We are given a clue here: the sandal was in too bad a shape to be Ralph’s. So who could the murderer have been if not Ralph, and an Indian man? Stay tuned.
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Cynthia justifying herself to Ralph …
As Sood is taken to his death, Ian jumps up and attempts to hug Sood, and stop this killing — very moving moment
See the comments for Episodes 9 or “Secrets Out”, and 10: Temporary Resolutions and the Hanging of Sood.
In another week or so I’ll write about the second season. For now Indian Summers might be considered an answer to the critiques of The Jewel in the Crown. Here we genuinely see the Raj from several different Indian POVs, and its power and cruelty are before us. It also much to its credit gives us a deeper sense of the permeations between England and Indian culture — no matter how hard the English tried to insulate themselves, they cannot. The little instruments are here too: it’s also the first one I’ve seen showing how ostracizing someone from the club could be used. Without the club, Ian has no friends, no where to go. These ever so civil upper class types, high cultured, are a bunch of ruthless murderers. But all are equally capable of evil and harm. An Indian man comes up to Aafrin and lets him know he knows about how Aafrin stole the document — he is demanding money to stay silent. I became intensely involved with all the characters; part of my grief at the cancelling of the series was to lose their presences and their full stories over the projected 50 episodes.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
I’ve called Episode 9, Secrets Out
What I’ve loved is the slow out of the underbelly of this colonialist order. It has taken time to show it believably and insightfully. In this penultimate episode the engineered death of Eugene Matthews (Cynthia threw him in the filthy damp room), grief of Madeleine and Cynthia’s relentless hostile campaign against Madeleine, now leading to her buying passage for Madeleine in the hope she’ll return to Chicago and stay there (such a long and expensive trip), something is triggered in Ralph and he accuses her of what he knows to be so: it was she who arranged to have him transferred to Burma, she who then told the males in Jaya’s village Jaya was pregnant and thus is responsible for her beatings and becoming homeless.
The raging quarrel brings out Cynthia’s intense racism – in that it takes raging anger and real knowledge on Ralph’s part, for he knew much of this before Jaya’s return and death when he saw it – it’s not clear he knew he had a son until Raworth and Leena rescued the boy — to get Cynthia to confess. Another trigger is his son coming up to him and delivering the note that his mother is dead, he is the son’s father and he has no name, he says in the note
The one flaw in Foyle is that the people at the end of each episode confess so quickly and simply – that is not what would happen in reality. And it does not happen here. The triggering of Ralph by Cynthia’s trying to part him from Madeleine is connected back to how he did love Jaya and was parted from her. Cynthia says, Oh if you loved her, what stopped you from marrying her? He was younger, didn’t imagine what would happen to Jaya, was more intimidated than he is today. He rushes to Madeleine and tells her for the first time he loves her (he has just told Cynthia he doesn’t) and asks her to stay.
Sarah Raworth is filled with hatred and resentment and the one person she can prey on is Alice, and so now she says she will tell of the husband – since she has seen Alice, Leena and her husband so happy playing with the children and her husband’s hand on Leena’s arm. Ralph intervenes quickly enough with a lie that he knows a headmaster of a desirable school and would be glad to place Matthew there as a bursar. She should think about it – the same way he pulled Aafrin into being his clerk. He could perhaps have done something for Ramu Sood – he is reassured but by Cynthia (whose breath is not worth the air she takes up) that Sood was of course guilty but he knows what a liar she is.
Ralph is subtle and he gets back at Cynthia underhandedly – he knows that she loathes the idea any non-white can come to the club so he apologizes to the Viceroy for abandoning the rather hopeless task he was given of negotiating with a maharajah prince, saying Madeleine’s brother had died and of course he must console her (the Viceroy reacts like a Pavlov dog in acquiescing to this pious need), and then says the maharajah was mad because he saw the “no dogs and no Indians” sign. They need to get rid of the color bar at the club. The Viceroy will act on that the next episode.
The subplot of Aafrin is coming to a close. At last he rejects Sita who cries and says that she was too timid to give the note to his family — we realize she didn’t mean any harm But he then says, it’s not only that. She interrupts: Is it your English missy? As when Miss Bingley makes digging remarks about Elizabeth, it does not drive Darcy to her arms, so this snide mock doesn’t help Sita. Aafrin turns up at the club, and says he and Alice must go to talk somewhere and takes Alice to the hidden cottage just outside the club. They make love and he is last seen arriving at the Dalal’s with a very comfortable smile on his face.
The men get what they want, do they not?
In season two we will understand more of what drives Cynthia. Here are some clues on what’s to be uncovered. Cynthia in her anger says Ralph’s father will be so disappointed in him if he gives up the chase. Next season we learn that Ralph’s father is Cynthia’s dead husband. Ralph recognizes the bracelet that Bhupi gives Alice’s maid is the one he gave to Jaya upon their union. She wore it on her arm. He asks Bhupi how did you get this? At first Bhupi says the bazaar, and Ralph says that couldn’t be, so Bhupi says he found it. We now have a suspect for Jaya’s murder – Bhupi — or an accident of some sort from his say bullying Jaya to go away except she was stabbed to death.
This episode keeps Sood and McCleod offstage – saving the final shock for the last episode. We realize this during the hour.
Ellen
Episode 10: Temporary resolutions and the hanging of Sood
Finally we have a confession. At the beginning of the episode Bhupi tries to hang himself. He says it was he who killed Jaya. Ralph is of course all fondness for such devotion … What’s not clear is how deliberate the murder was or how much Ralph was involved.
Aafrin learns that Ralph is capable of sending Ramu Sood to his death because (as Ralph now condescends to tell Aafrin, as if he’s one of “them,” to be trusted) Sood was becoming a lightening rod for discontents of all sorts, and people might organize around Sood. In fact, there was no such organization as Sood was himself of a wealthy Muslim family
When McCleod thinking he is stealing Sood’s ashes (and he might have been, it’s not clear what is in the box he takes from Rowntree’s office — there was not enough time for a cremation), he flees to a bridge where there is a large gathering of Indians and is treated like a hero. He scatters what passes for Sood’s ashes into a near river under a bridge. We are terribly touched by the grief of Sood’s mother-in-law: it was Sood’s wife’s wedding dress that made the connection the Brits used to take Sood out. Sooni there with McCleod, also for a time Alice.
Very moving the scenes between Sood and McCleod in the prison; The Viceroy or Whelan could have asked for clemency, and Whelan made a show of writing two different letters, one asking for clemency (life imprisonment which could end in parole). The two men are father and son, two mates together wrestling — at the hanging Cynthia shows up to signal to Sood that she has won. Sood is brought out early in the morning and hanged. Cynthia enacts one of the most despicable moments in the whole series as she grins triumphantly at him before the hood is put over his face.
As I said, one could see pinpointing her as misogyny. She just loathes that any Indian will be allowed to be a member of the club. Ralph has engineered the vote and anonymously it’s unanimous tha Indians must be let in. But it emerges that this entry will be only for a token: Aafrin and his father Darius Dalal. There is nonetheless a near humiliation of the old man stopped in time by Keane and then Aafrin and then common sense and the humble bearing of the father.
Meanwhile the ugly natured Sarah is leaving for England — yes Ralph got the boy a Bursar’s scholarship. She wants her husband to grieve – he cannot. We see him return to the school but tell Leena he cannot have an affair with her. She says all she ever wanted was him with her at the school with these children. We see them sitting down to a meal. Ralph has come back — doubtless to check up if any mutiny of any kind emerging
Whelan and Madeleine are seen dancing in the front grass. Alice leads Aafrin to tell Ralph of their affair but this is before Aafrin is horrified to discover Ralph sent Sood to his death. He now fears Ralph and Ralph’s possible anger and he demurs telling. Among the last words of the series are Aafrin telling Alice her brother is a dangerous man.
Aafrin has now agreed to work with the man who was blackmailing him to become active against the Brits. Alice yields a lot and now she is glad to be dancing in the club with Aafrin there too.
Last scene Ralph comes down the hill where Cynthia is climbing up from having had a drunken sullen time alone (a la Achilles she went into a tent to show she will not accept Indians). He clearly accepts her and acknowledges yes it was him who changed the club rules because he was angry. But she’s all he’s got to depend on, from his childhood (except Alice), and he’s all she’s got (except Kaiser). And he helps her back into the club where he says they’ll do an encore of in the good old’ summertime.
It is the last night of summer at the club for that year.
And so the season or first series comes to an end …
Do you have a subscription? Did you buy the series? I have the firestick installed but am surprised at how much must be purchased or rented. Dick and Brenda Cheadle dbcheadle@verizon.net
I don’t know what you mean by firestick. For this one since I had rented it as DVDs from Netflix and knew how much I liked it, I bought the two sets of DVDs (season 1 and season 2).
On rare occasions I can’t get my DVD players to work (I have two) I have watched an episode — or tried to — on Prime Video. Yes you are right: more and more you must subscribe to some channel streaming service, or buy the episode on Prime Video on Amazon. A new wrinkle is you can see it “for free” with ads — but the ads are as intrusive and frequent as commercial TV. I can’t bear that.
I found a DVD set Region one for the first season of My Brilliant Friend but the next two seasons are Region 2 and I can’t always play these so I’ve bought My Brilliant Friend, episode by episode on Amazon Prime. I think they cost me either 2.99 or 3.99 each. Ever after I can re-watch them and no commercials. But they are not available any other way unless I subscribe to HBO Max ($14.99 a month).
So this is the new commercial reality.
Once it is cooler and you are back here at my home, remind me to show you what little I know about the Amazon Firestick. Look at your newest TV and see if there is a UBS port, perhaps on the edge of the screen. If you have a port you can purchase an inexpensive Firestick and plug it in. Then you can see Amazon videos, Netflix, all sorts of thing on your tv screen. I’ll show you when you are here. You may want to look on Youtube at a video explaining it- just look under Amazon firestick or just firestick. Dick and Brenda Cheadle dbcheadle@verizon.net
[…] as evaluated the first half of Season 1, one of the finest series ever made, and its second half, a tragic and ironic denouement. In the series itself, it’s three years later, and we are startled to see as our first image, […]