Pin-Up Bunty

I can’t say that I’m a fan of the popular BBC series FATHER BROWN (2013-present), as I haven’t seen more than a couple episodes from its fifth series (2016-2017), and those, caught by chance on TV, not in its entirety. However, the character of Penelope “Bunty” Windermere, played by British actress Emer Kenny, and of whom I always think of as Lady Penelope Windermere, caught my fancy.

Setting the series in the early ninety-fifties, instead of the first third of the twentieth century, like the Chesterton stories they’re loosely based on, allows for wonderful fashion and beautiful cars, and Penelope distinguishes herself on both counts. Now, Emer Kenny, in the few episodes I did catch, makes for a fascinating fifties fallen aristocrat, at the same time daring and yet feminine, outspoken and yet wise, haughty and yet compassionate. And terribly sexy.

Then, in the episode “The Eagle and the Daw”, Father Brown is incarcerated, framed for murder by a condemned woman that he had helped convict, and it falls on the shoulders of Bunty and Mrs McCarthy to clear him of the false charges. And while I was watching posh Lady Penelope visiting the vindictive woman in jail, interrogating suspects, and even climbing a ladder into the parish church’s rooftop to recover a decisive piece of evidence, always dressed in those elegant fifties clothes, her lips properly glossed, her hair wonderfully wavy, I found myself thinking that I would love to have a set of posters/calendars/whatever of Bunty posing as a Pin-Up girl. You know what I mean: those gorgeous fifties Pin-Ups by Gil Elvgren, with pleated skirts and garter belts, tight sweaters and ballerina shoes, tight pants and naked torsos, with slender arms covering trembling breasts…

Those were images that plagued my mind for a few days afterwards. Then, just two episodes after that one, there came “The Crimson Feather”, and the place that gave its name for the episode, was no more and no less than a house of ill repute where, as fate demanded, Lady Penelope chose to infiltrate herself in order to check if a missing girl was working there. And then, some of the images in my mind gained form when Bunty appeared on stage on a casting performance, clad in stunningly daring lingerie.

And I found it soothing…or should I say fitting…to find out that clearly I was not the only one harboring such undignified erotic thoughts about Lady Penelope Windermere.