User Reviews

The positives first. Esse Davis fulfills her role with panache and style. In fact I look forward to each of the episodes just to see what she is wearing and how the producers have managed to capture 1920's Melbourne. Death at Victoria Dock however was an open mouthed shock. Now if you are not Latvian it really won't matter and you will continue to enjoy this episode. However, a note to Ms. Birse. The number of Latvians in Australia in the 1920's could be counted on one hand. They would NOT speak Russian just having managed to expel them and create a Republic. Balalaika music? The hair on the back of my neck stood on end! I note on the credits that "The Latvian Society" was consulted. Don't know who that was but if any of the 4,000 or so Latvians in Victoria find out, he/she will be firmly castigated. Apart from that bit of angst, I would still recommend viewing this series. It is charming and a delight to watch.

I'd say that the best moment of the episode was when the "Latvians" spoke "Latvian" at the bar, while actually just exclaiming "Atrak, kap masina!", which simply means: "Hurry up, get into the car!". Obviously it was a line that was simply recycled from the beginning of the episode during the murderers getaway. Apart from that it was amusing to watch how everything that was shown about Latvian people was wrong, the only thing kept truthful being the capitol of Latvia. It is obvious that the makers of this particular episode didn't care to do some research and just decided to use some small country to keep things from being cliche. Latvian language is not even slavic so there. Also, never compare a Latvian to Russia or the Russian language as we view it as insulting. Latvia has issues enough to keep an identity and we don't appreciate the Russians coming along and complicating the job.

I was not expecting a big historical and cultural accuracy from this show, but still to get almost everything wrong... First of all - Latvians (and Lithuanians and Estonians) are NOT Russians or even Slavs. If they had chosen to depict some generic Eastern European country or Russia, it would still be full of cliches but at least the stereotypes would fit. A stereotypical Latvian is a blue-eyed blond who loves nature, singing and dancing, is very peace loving and wants to be just left alone. Latvian language is neither slavic or related to russian. Those 'latvians' all had slavic sounding names. Latvians have their own, germanic or scandinavian names with strict set of rules. That dear Miss Fisher assumed that a latvian would understand russian, when (at that time) german would have been mostly spoken as a second language. (On a side note - a free Latvian Republic always has chosen english (and not german or russian) as a second language for Latvians. So in 20ies and 30ies Latvia english was taught as second language in schools). Those slavic prison looking tattoos were awful. Latvians have their own symbols and signs, none of which look even similar to those. Oh, the balalaika was hilarious! Latvians don't have or use that instrument. At that time it would have been violin, piano or an accordeon (well, they still are). Also Latvians were always one of the first to follow new music tendencies and fashion. The most funniest moment was that those 'latvians' spoke latvian like a russian would try to speak latvian with a heavy russian accent, the same way they were speaking english.

Last, but not least - motivation. It just made no sense for a Latvian to be an anarchist (even for a revolutioner), never have they used that symbol (latvians have plenty of their own as I mentioned before). A Latvian has always been a defender not an attacker. And those 5 Latvians that would have been there in Australia in the 20ies would just try to integrate. As for those thousands that came to Australia in the 40ies, they were fleeing FROM russians and certain death. So the show ignored everything about Latvian language, culture and history. Why then even choose Latvia? If they hadn't repeatedly called them latvians, I would never guess. I would assume that they are russians who spoke broken Latvian. Miss Fisher's ignorance and arrogance was very telling. But what do you expect from a french woman? Oh, she wasn't french? My bad. Frenchmen and Englishmen sound and look the same to me.

There are some very violent Latvians loose in Melbourne, Phryne gets caught up in the middle of a feud.

This is the first one I didn't really enjoy, I thought the story was paper thin, and for once the acting was a little below par, some of the accents were rather amusing, not in a good way.

The bank scene was perhaps the best part, and did at least add a bit of entertainment.

There had to be one dodgy episode, unfortunately this was it, 5/10.