Highland flings and time travel: have you been watching Outlander?
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Version 0 of 1. When the US cable channel Starz first announced it was adapting Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling Outlander novels, I was conflicted. On one hand, I tore through Gabaldon’s high-octane mix of love, war, time travel and 18th-century Scottish history in two feverish days as a student in the mid-90s. On the other, it was hard to imagine how its inimitable mix of hot Highland flings and deep peril was going to play out on screen. Like Winston Graham’s Poldark novels, these are books you read at a gallop, caught up in the story and, yes, I’ll admit it, somewhat in the grip of lust, for Gabaldon’s strapping Highland hero Jamie and for the woman he loves, the straight-talking, no-nonsense former second world war nurse, Claire Randall. While the opening credits – scenic shots of Scotland accompanied by a mournful rendition of the Skye Boat Song – initially reinforced fears that this would be heritage TV by numbers, complete with skirling pipes, scenic ruins and brave lads and lassies battling evil redcoat troops, the reality has been clever and more complicated. Adapted by Ronald D Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame, the Outlander TV series manages to be faithful to the source material while building on it to create a fully realised world in which you swiftly accept the (admittedly slightly ludicrous) central premise that Claire manages to slip back in time to 1743 while visiting some old standing stones on her honeymoon. Stuck in the past, our heroine falls in with a ragtag bunch of Jacobite rebels while unintentionally attracting the wrath of the English captain of dragoons, Black Jack Randall, a man who (in one of the series’ more remarkable twists) turns out to be an ancestor of her mild-mannered husband Frank (both are played by Tobias Menzies). As a plot, it has more holes than your average cheese grater – and yet something about Outlander works. Claire (played with just the right amount of bolshie spark by Irish actor Caitriona Balfe) is no damsel in distress, but rather a coolly competent, sharp-tongued pragmatist who greets disaster by calmly rolling up her sleeves and trying to sort the mess out. This is a woman who has survived the brutalities of a far more modern war, and the show cleverly never forgets that, allowing the audience to see how she might feel at home with this band of fighting men, and why she is still reeling from the trauma of her recent wartime experience. It helps, too, that Outlander is a deeply romantic show and one that enjoys playing with romance’s conventions. Claire is passionate, experienced and open about her sexual desires but she doesn’t emotionally abandon Frank even as, trapped in the past, she begins to fall for young rebel Jamie – an altogether more innocent, virginal character, who is frequently imperilled. Outlander spends a great deal of time inverting traditional male and female roles to give us a fantasy in which the woman is very much centre stage and the gaze through which we view the story is hers: frank, unflinching and very definitely female. Not that it’s all about Claire (and Balfe). Sam Heughan impresses as the gruffly charming Jamie, Douglas Henshall has a ball as local rogue MacQuarrie, while in a double role as the vicious, complex Black Jack and the altogether more measured Frank, Menzies all but steals the show, dialling charisma and potential for evil up to 11. This is not, however, a show without flaws. After recapping Game of Thrones for the past few years, it sometimes seems as though I have to type this sentence out every week, but I am not a fan of rape plotlines as a method of upping the ante in stories, and Outlander’s biggest weakness is its constant use of rape as shorthand for “danger”. At the end of the very first episode, Claire announces: “I had been assaulted, kidnapped and nearly raped, and somehow I knew that my journey had only just begun.” Much of that journey has subsequently been spent in a delicately sadistic dance with Black Jack in which the threat of rape is ever-present, as is the growing realisation that it is Jamie – not Claire – whom the captain truly desires. That dance reached its apogee last week as the show’s penultimate episode culminated in Jamie’s prolonged torture and sexual assault. The whole thing was faithful to Gabaldon’s book, beautifully acted by Balfe, Heughan and, in particular, Menzies – and almost impossible to watch. That is not to say that television shows shouldn’t tackle dark themes, just that as with Game of Thrones, there are times in Outlander when you wonder whether the writers just sat down and said: “How shall we imperil them this week?” “Oh, let’s throw in a bit of rape, that’ll work.” And sometimes, to be fair, it does. There is a memorable scene in which Jamie’s sister Jenny (Laura Donnelly), previously presumed by her brother to have been attacked by Randall, tells the story of what really happened: he tries to rape her, can’t get it up, she laughs at him, and he struggles further before giving up. The moment still ends in violence – but Jenny is not raped. She survives to build her own love- and laughter-filled life in a place and time in which both are apparently in short supply. In the books, Jamie’s assault is handled with a great degree of care, and there is no reason to presume that the TV adaptation, which has largely played fair with viewers throughout an involving first season, won’t manage a similar level of sensitivity as it reaches its emotional conclusion next week. It is just a shame, in an otherwise emotionally satisfying and consistently surprising show, that once again rape is the lever used to move our hero and heroine forwards. |