Bill Prindle

Mary Elizabeth Winstead was as gifted as Rosalind Russell in her prime in the TV series Brain Dead, but in this series as a Russian actress-femme fatale she is utterly unconvincing and got the job because she is the wife of the star and producer of the series Ewan McGregor. Count Rostov’s (Ewan McGregor) friend Mishka is played by the Black actor Fehinti Balogun, who badly overacts but is part of the greater problem of casting a Black actor in what purports to be an historically accurate period drama. Sorry, but the character was not Black in the novel for a reason; it would have been an historical impossibility. He even wears his hair in a contemporary mini-dred style as if to ensure that we realize a Black actor is really there, anachronistically so. Actors of various races in a a fanciful interpretation of a period drama make perfect sense, like Bridgeton. But not in this one. It ruined what was otherwise a well-acted, well-cast, well-scored, and beautifully imagined setting.

A ghost who doesn’t speak and who does seemingly very little evokes a surprisingly strong emotional reaction. And what DID she write on that little piece of paper?