Commentary
The Infinite Sadness Of 'Alice Hart,' And TV In General
- by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 4, 2023
What do people get out of watching stories of tragedy and sadness?
The subject arises here from time to time, triggered by new shows that come up for commentary due to a pending premiere date.
Today’s show is “The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart,” premiering Friday on Amazon Prime.
It is an Australian-made drama about a nine-year-old girl (the Alice Hart of the title) who is repeatedly beaten for years by her father until the day he and his wife -- the girl’s mother who is 25 weeks pregnant -- die in a fire.
Alyla Browne plays the young Alice and Alicia Debnam-Carey (pictured above, looking sad) plays the older Alice.
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The Harts are the mystery family of their small community. They live on an old farm within walking distance of the town, but Dad forbids little Alice and mom Agnes to go there.
After the fatal fire, which leaves young Alice comatose, the everyday life of the Hart family is still a mystery to everybody else -- and perhaps an even bigger one.
By the end of Episode One of this seven-part miniseries, Alice’s estranged grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) shows up dressed head-to-toe in black, and raises the question of who will care for the newly orphaned Alice.
Loneliness, longing, introspection, sadness, a lost childhood (symbolized by the “lost flowers” of the title), domestic abuse and death are all ingredients that went into the making of the “Alice Hart” story, and so many other made-for-TV dramas.
You know the type -- serial killers, missing children who end up murdered, bodies found on remote beaches, divorces, secrets and all sorts of grim evil-doings.
“The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart” even comes with a viewer advisory at the outset of Episode One warning of the infinite sadness to come.
“This episode deals with sensitive issues, including domestic abuse. Viewer discretion is advised,” says the warning.
Dramatizations of domestic abuse in TV shows and movies are often very hard to take, and these scenes in “Alice Hart” are no exception.
I sometimes wonder about these viewer advisories. Some time ago, they were usually confined to depictions of violence and sex.
Today they warn of all sorts of things. Before watching a movie on Netflix the other day, an advisory warned that the movie contained scenes of drinking alcohol and cigarette smoking.
Whether this drove anyone away from the movie -- “A Most Wanted Man,” a 2014 spy thriller --is anybody’s guess.
Reader advisory: Lead actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman chain-smokes and sits in many bars drinking throughout the entire movie. You have been warned.
Where warnings of scenes of domestic abuse and other violent acts perpetrated on the helpless are concerned, I have always wondered about these advisories and how much they are actually heeded.
My question about the whole thing usually is: If you have to warn somebody away from a TV show or movie, doesn’t that run contrary to the purpose of entertainment, which is to attract rather than repel viewership?
As for the question posed at the top of this TV Blog, I have no answer.
“The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart” premieres Friday (August 4) on Amazon Prime Video.
In my world, these advisory statements are called trigger warnings. If a topic in my class might make someone feel unsafe or upset, it's my responsibility to warn them. At least one study claims the warnings have no effect: https://theconversation.com/proceed-with-caution-the-trouble-with-trigger-warnings-192598 -- but many students expect them anyway and perhaps by now so, too, do viewers. It's a not-so-brave new world.