Anybody else watching this new series? I think we’re to the seventh or eighth installment.
I’m sooo . . . confuzzled. Can someone give me the Cliff’s Notes version of all the plots that are going one?
Specifically:
Whelan fathered the child of the woman found drowned?
Were they secretly married?
Is Whelan himself part Indian? Is he gay?
What the Hell is Julie Walters’ relationship to Whelan? She’s not a blood relative?
Arrgghhh, so much to follow!
I’m watching. I’ve only seen through Sunday’s episode and I think I understand what’s going on. Ralph Whelan had an affair with Jaya (the woman living in the jungle) and fathered Adam. I very much doubt they were ever married.
Chandru Mohan is the guy who shot at Ralph and whom Ralph visited in his jail cell. I was confused when Chandru first seemed to greet Ralph affectionately and then started to beat on him. The most recent episode revealed that he was Jaya’s father, so presumably he was pissed at Ralph for ruining his daughter (who seems to have had a mental breakdown).
Julie Walter’s character (Cynthia) is, I think, just friends with Ralph, perhaps because she thinks he could be the next viceroy. That’s one reason she pushed him into a relationship with Madeleine, sister of Eugene Mathers, because their family has a steel fortune in the US. (But Eugene reveals to Cynthia that the family fortune is mostly lost.)
I’ve seen the whole thing here, so will try to avoid spoilers-
Ralph was, indeed, the father of the drowned woman’s child, though it is unclear whether or not they were secretly married. Probably not. Not good for someone who is in line to become the face of Britain. Both Ralph and his sister had grown up in India as children and were presumably sent to England for schooling to keep the from ‘going too native’.
Cynthia runs their club, presumably lives there year round, and appears to be the widow of some ranking military man. She is one of those stereotypical arbiters of society that seem to crop up in anything about the British upper classes around the turn of the century- See Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. Cynthia is particularly outmoded, as we are racing toward the mobility of the middle and lower classes (to some extent) and to Indian independence. She’s a leftover, knows it, and is trying to hang on by making herself ‘Mummy’ to the motherless Ralph.
Edited: rethinking it, it’s debatable how self aware Cynthia actually is. She probably doesn’t know, and tries to keep using her iron fist.
One of the reviews of the show pointed out that the people we’re seeing in high levels of the Indian Civil Service would be in low-level positions back in England. Cynthia might be simply working in a shop somewhere. Ralph might be a low-level civil servant someplace. Some of these people come to India (or other colonies) simply so they can live and work at a higher status level than they could back home.