Blake and/et Mortimer: The Yellow Mark/La Marque Jaune
I see from the Cambridge Dictionary that 'cult' in the sense it is used in the title of this blog is defined as appealing to a particular group of people, and honestly using that definition a TV based on Belgian Francophone comic books about two stiff-upper lipped British men, bizarrely translated into English and turned into a TV series, is probably about as cult as it can get, so of course it had to appear here.
Les Aventures de Blake et Mortimer is a long-running (1946 to the present) series of Belgian comics starring the two eponymous heroes. Professor Philip Mortimer is a leading Scottish scientist who gets into all sorts of adventures because he tends to be a bit impulsive. Captain Francis Blake is one of these people who have definitely been in the armed services but now probably aren't allowed to tell you what they do for a living because of the Official Secrets Act. They live together in London. There's nothing going on, of course, this is the 1950s. Their adventures tend to span traditional detection/security and some much more science fiction subjects. If you haven't come across them the closest comparison I can think of is a cross between Dick Barton and 1930s cinema serials. They are very much of their time, and as such are glorious.
They aren't all set in Britain obviously (one adventure is about Atlantis, for example, and others take place all over the world), but a lot of the point of them is the perceived Britishness of the protagonists. What makes this perception unique to this programme is that the Britishisness isn't seen through the eyes of either Americans or our former colonies. This gives it a distinctively French take on les biftecks.
The series of books was faithfully adapted into an animated series in 1997, with some new adventures added. It is available in both French and dubbed into English. They are exactly the same show with all the titles in French, just with an English soundtrack. In the UK you can buy it on region 2 DVD with just the English soundtrack, but I see from Canadian and French Amazon there is a huge array of different DVD releases in multiple languages, formats, and nary a mention of region, and many of which seem to be priced at huge prices.
Regular readers of the blog will not be surprised in the slightest to know that I think a minority of the reviews online of this particular episode are slightly unfair. Don't quote me on this, but my understanding of Francophone BD culture is that the comic books can be read by the kids (and in my French exchange days the kids would sit on the floor of the hypermarket reading them) but that there isn't any shame in adults reading or collecting them either. Certainly La Marque Jaune first appeared in instalments in 1953 to 1954 in Tintin magazine, which subtitles itself as the magazine for youth from 7 to 77. I think it's not really fair to expect a level of plot that you would get in an adult detective novel. There is an additional adjustment to make, which is that while the show is a faithful adaptation, time constraints necessarily mean that some layers of Jacobs's famous byzantine plotting have had to be omitted. But I just think it's not really fair to criticise thiese things too much.
La Marque Jaune is set in London, which for some time has been terrorised (much of this summary is lifted from the Wikipedia entry) by a mysterious thief who tells the press about the crimes he is going to commit and then commits them, leaving a yellow M behind in a circle. Ultimately he escalates to stealing the Imperial State Crown from the Tower of London and the Home Office asks captain Francis Blake to help Scotland Yard solve these crimes. We are introduced to a selection of the great and the good, one of whom, Vernay, is abducted and a yellow M left behind.
Even though this sounds, and is, predominantly a straightforward detective story, there is a hint of science fiction present, and what I love about it most is that the villain is absolutely deranged. We're talking Avengers villain levels of derangement and the whole plot takes place amongst people who are definitely Our Sort of People. But luckily ultimately the crown is saved. You have no idea how much difficulty I have had stopping myself giving it away, but I suspect this show may not be so well known to cult TV fans, so I will leave the solution for your delectation.
I have a couple of criticisms. One which drives me spare is that the unnamed person who translated the script used to dub the show into English made the decision to translate 'the yellow mark' as 'the yellow brand'. This drives me crazy, and I have even looked it up in a couple of north American dictionaries to see whether it just isn't British English, but no. As far as I can see the verb brand used a sort of mark only means marks made by hot metal, which isn't what is happening. Perhaps they realised that this wasn't the right English translation of La Marque Jaune, since the title of the episode is The Yellow Mark and the English title of the translated book is The Yellow "M", either of which would have been perfectly sensible translations. I may be nit picking if I also point out that in the show the M is described by Professor Mortimer as a Greek mu. Honestly I wish they'd just picked one thing which was actually English and stuck to it.
I'm not convinced I'm being fair, given that this is a fictional work depicting British people as seen (stereotyped?) by outsiders but I'm not convinced any Scottish person has ever exclaimed the thing Mortimer keeps saying, 'By the tartan of Clan MacGregor!' I really hope no Belgian or Canadian kids use this to learn English because the results would be hilarious.
Otherwise, I cannot recommend this show (and the books which inspired it) highly enough and definitely think you should all watch them.
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