With few
exceptions, the overwhelmingly secular filmmakers in Hollywood don’t present Christianity
in a favorable, or even a balanced, light. Characters who are overtly Christian
are almost always caricatures if not the bad guys: fanatical fundamentalists, over-the-top
hypocrites, sexually perverse, outright evil, or a combination thereof. The British
leftist propaganda network, the BBC, is typically just as bigoted in this
respect as Hollywood, which makes its series The Frankenstein Chronicles
all the more stunning as a pro-life, cautionary tale of a world without God.
The Frankenstein Chronicles is a two-season BBC
series (six episodes in each) from 2015-17, available on Netflix. It stars Sean
Bean, who is well-known from dozens of films and TV shows such as The
Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and the James Bond film Goldeneye (Bean reportedly
was once considered for the role of Bond). Set in 1820’s London, the series
follows Bean, looking even more grizzled than usual here, as war veteran and
river detective John Marlott. He is tasked with investigating a monstrous crime:
the body of a young girl has been recovered from the Thames, and Marlott learns
that her corpse actually consists of the parts of eight different children,
stitched together into a single body. Someone is kidnapping and murdering
street urchins, then performing unholy experiments on them. But for what
purpose?
The show reflects
a real-life, early 19th-century surge of interest in anatomy thanks
to an increase in the importance of surgery. At this time, only the corpses of
executed murderers could legally be used for dissection. But the rise of
medical science and a reduction in executions meant that an underground trade
in grave robbing began to flourish. The trade was conducted by so-called “resurrectionists,” who robbed graves to sell
corpses for medical study. An Anatomy Act was proposed which would ensure that
anyone practicing anatomy had to obtain a license from the Home Secretary. It gave
physicians, surgeons, and students legal access to corpses unclaimed after
death – in particular, those who had died in hospitals, prisons, and workhouses
– which would end the work of the despised resurrectionists but meant that the
bodies of society’s downtrodden would be denied dignity and become fodder for
medical experiments.
Marlott is a
working-class stiff whose soul has been ravaged by the drowning death of his
young daughter and his wife’s subsequent suicide – and if you’re familiar with
Sean Bean’s work, you know that there is literally no actor alive whose face
more convincingly conveys a world-weariness and torturous guilt. Troubled by dreams
and hallucinations in which he sees, but cannot reunite with, his deceased
family, and disturbed by the prospect that children are being victimized by “a
monster with a human face,” Marlott begins to obsess over the case, which leads
him deeper and deeper into a tangled political web, and dangerously close to
the darkest evil.
Marlott gradually
deduces that some skilled surgeon is attempting to give life to the corpses to arrogate
to himself the ultimate power: the power to overcome death. Suspecting there is
a connection between the murders and the popular but shocking novel
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, Marlott questions the book’s author
Mary Shelley, whom he also suspects is involved. She explains to him the
significance of the Prometheus legend: “He stole fire from the Gods and molded
from human clay, like my Victor [Frankenstein]. A symbol of rebellion. For all
of us who oppose tyranny and oppression.”
“Tyranny and
oppression? Or the laws of God?” Marlott counters.
“What would we
not do to defeat death, Mr. Marlott?” Shelley challenges. “Might we not defy
God’s laws, in order to be reunited with those we love?” – a message that hits
too close to home for the bereaved Marlott.
An increasingly
determined Marlott pursues the truth until at last he confronts the monster
with a human face – and his most successful experiment. When Marlott tells the villain’s
protégé that they will answer to God for their perversion, the latter justifies
it by summing up the show’s theme again – replying that there is no God, and
where there is no God, “anything is possible.” In his mind, no God means that
the possibilities for humanity are freeing and limitless; but the show’s message
is clearly meant to be that the absence of God means the possibilities for plumbing
the depths of evil are limitless. In that respect, the show also addresses
the topic of abortion (which of course was illegal at the time) and takes a
surprisingly pro-life stance.
Actual historical
characters who make appearances in the series include the aforementioned
novelist Mary Shelley; the mystic poet and artist William Blake, whose occult
paintings offer clues to a missing child; Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel,
considered the father of modern British policing; and a young, muckraking
journalist named Charles Dickens (under his pseudonym “Boz”). Romantic poet
Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace, who is sometimes acknowledged as one of the
first computer programmers for her work with inventor Charles Babbage, also
plays a creepy role in the second season.
With unusual
exceptions, I’m not a fan of the horror genre. I would recommend a horror movie
or show only if it was intelligently written, well-told (including in terms of
its production values), and presented thought-provoking ideas and/or moral insights.
The
Frankenstein Chronicles fulfills
all of this.
While all the acting in The Frankenstein Chronicles is outstanding,
the underrated Sean Bean is extraordinary as Marlott, particularly at one
jaw-dropping plot twist halfway through the series. Be forewarned though
that the show is grim, occasionally gruesome, and haunting, but is less about
the standard tropes of horror flicks than it is about the depraved depths to
which people with no moral limits will sink in the course of usurping the power
of God. In the face of this evil, it offers hope.
In an age in
which the numbers of believers are reportedly in decline; in which Christians
are the most persecuted believers in the world; in which secular elites
relentlessly push the false notions that science and religion are incompatible
and that Christians are “anti-science,” The Frankenstein Chronicles offers a refreshing
condemnation of the arrogance and lust for divine power that have characterized
humanity ever since Adam and Eve were seduced by the serpent’s promise that “ye
shall be as gods.”
From FrontPage Mag, 4/29/20
