This time of year, a lot of people (for better and for worse) wind up spending a lot of time with their families. So what better time to bring back one of the most dysfunctional families on television: the good folks of Hunderby?

When last we saw them, things were…complicated. Edmund, the master of Hunderby and the local vicar, had married Helene, a woman with a mysterious past and the permanent look of a freshly landed fish. Put off by Edmund’s and his creepy housekeeper, Dorothy’s, obsession with Edmund’s dead first wife, Helene fell for the local doctor, Graham Foggerty, a man miserably married to Hester, who was crippled when he ran her over the night before their wedding. His and Helene’s affair resulted in a pregnancy, and when Helene went into labour, we suddenly discovered the following: 1) Edmund’s first wife was not dead but had been kept in the attic for years, Mrs Rochester-style. But then she fell out of the attic and died, so we’re pretty sure she’s for reals dead now. 2) Edmund, a poorly closeted homosexual, was set up by his mother to rape Dorothy years ago, and said rape resulted in the birth of twins who grew up to be…Hester and Fogarty. The shock of all this seems to have given Edmund some sort of stroke, rendering him just this side of comatose. Helene gave birth to a son, and since Foggerty’s marriage to Hester is clearly unlawful now that they’re twins and all, it looks like he and Helene will get to be together after all. And he’ll get to inherit Hunderby someday.

Continue reading “Hunderby: One Big, Happy Family”