Clearly the advent of Netflix and Amazon Prime has changed our TV watching habits. Now it’s debatable whether we are better for it – but as with anything new, the family and I have taken to it with gusto. Imagine our surprise when we discovered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (that ABC) has brought Phryne (pronounced Fry-nee) Fisher, the irrepressible Flapper, to the (not-so-little) screen and thanks to Netflix we were able to catch the entire first season in one short week of binge watching.
Readers of this blog are old enough to recall when the Lord of the Rings trilogy (or if you are older, Superman) was going to first make it to the silver screen. I recall hoping that they don’t ruin the darn thing. I first encountered Kerry Greenwood’s 1920s English socialite Phryne in Book #1 Cocaine Blues. A sale on BookBub (if you haven’t subscribed, you should) for the Kindle is what brought Cocaine Blues to my attention.
I’ve met my share of unusual and interesting female detectives on said Kindle (Julie Smith’s Rebecca Schwartz, Pamela Fagan Hutchins’ Katie, my own favorite Patricia Mason’s Imogene Tuttle aka Mo, to name just three). But Phryne Fisher went one step further, combining a great detective (independent-minded socialite risen from a poor childhood) in a not-so-common setting (’20s Melbourne) with a sizable cast of supporting characters. Check it out on Netflix, and let me know what you think!
Mystery in History 