Cookson

In an age of Downton Abbey, PBSs homage to the death of the Golden Age and Victorian aristocracy in England, the more appropriate choice of streaming media for these times is The Catherine Cookson Collection, a collection of movies and min-series based on Catherine Cookson's novels. Downton Abbey, the work of actor/write Julian Fellowes, himself privileged by birth, is a glowing representation of the dying Brit aristocracy. Downton's servants are stiff-upper-lip martyrs, resigned for the most part to the noble slavery of service. World War I's trenches were their reward.

Catherine Cookson, born to a single mother in her poor grandparents' home in the north of England in 1902, worked hard to become an independent woman. In her first adult job, she did laundry in a settlement house for the poor. She did not marry until she was 34. By then she had managed to scrape together enough money to run a humble boarding house for working people. Her husband, five years her junior, was a school teacher. They remained married until their deaths, days apart, in 1998. They had no children. 

Catherine Cookson is England's most read female writer at over 100 million copies. She began writing in her forties as a way to recover from a mental breakdown, following a miscarriage and diagnosis of a chronic, debilitating blood disease. She wrote from her experience of life, a life she maintained in moderation and humility to her death. As a humanist, I feel Ms. Cookson was a true humanist writer, though I am not aware of her being awarded any society trophies for her humanist sensibilities. She was made a Dame with an OBE in 1993. Perhaps this was a bow to her financial success as an author.

Unlike Downton Abbey, Catherine Cookson's work is intrinsically feminist and socialist. She was apparently apolitical in her life, but her writing portrays the evolution of female liberation over a century. Cookson's work was demeaned by male critics as "romance fiction". She rejected this entirely. Her stories are shockingly realistic. The filthy conditions and brutality of poor working class people in Britain in the early 20th century is all there. Yet, it is balanced with love, loyalty and commitment between outsiders who choose their own paths, despite social pressures and condemnation. As a gay man, I relate strongly to these themes in her work.

While the glossy splash of Downton Abbey in HD is seductive, the films of the Cookson,Collection are heartfelt. Frankly, the acting in some of them far surpasses the acting in the PBS offering. If you are a woman, a humanist and/or a fan of British acting, I think the Cookson Collection on instant-view Netflix is a treasure trove waiting for your discovery. I do not make a recommendation like this lightly.