Just finished watching the new Lynley show on the BBC and I have some Thoughts about female characters.
I'm approaching this without reference to the books which I haven't read or the older series which I haven't seen. I appreciate that this show has probably changed things but I'm only looking at this from how it holds together as a show rather than an adaptation.
My issue is Helen and the fact that I intensely disliked her within seconds of her being introduced. What the hell kind of internalised misogyny is this?! How can I explain an intense dislike of a minor female character who objectively has done nothing wrong?
Spoilers under the cut.
Helen is introduced on a case as an old university "friend" of Lynley's. She is conventionally attractive. There is very obvious attraction between them and they instantly start dating. The scenes Helen appears in consist of her looking immaculate, drinking wine and talking about her relationship with Lynley until the last episode when she is kidnapped, held in traumatic circumstances, manages to escape and bash her captive over the head and then be rescued by Lynley. She then tells him she can't be with him because of his job.
There is nothing intrinsically bad about Helen (well...) or her relationship with Lynley. He's allowed to date a woman he has history with and is attracted to! I think my issue with her is firstly that she only exists to be Lynley's love interest. She's introduced as an estate agent who has just taken over her father's business (hmm...) and is thrown in at the deep end, but this is never mentioned again. She doesn't seem to have any existence outside of Lynley and this makes sense because it's a crime show and she's not on the detective team, but it does make her intensely boring, which is my second point. Because she's never seen doing anything other than being a love interest, the viewer has no reason to care about her. She had history with Lynley at university so they already know each other. Barring talking about how she used to cook lots when they were students and she was dating Lynley's friend, we know nothing about her interests and what attracts Lynley to her or her to him beyond being hot and already knowing each other. I have no investment in her and their relationship and when it is threatened in the most cliche way imaginable (woman gets kidnapped! hero must rescue her! she suddenly discovers that she can kick ass and saves herself! but is still cradled tenderly by hero on the floor!) it's hard not to roll our eyes. She is a completely dispensible character to the overall narrative.
I've also suggested that maybe Helen is not quite as unobjectionable character as she appears. Two points. Firstly, the first time she and Lynley hook up, he misses a vital call from Havers because he's having sex. This leads to a massive clusterfuck and Havers blames herself for it. Lynley clearly knows he screwed up (in more ways than one) but while he valiently takes the rap for Havers, he never explains his culpability. If you are rooting for our heroes to succeed then this is really unattractive and is going to put us off the relationship that gets in the way of this success. Secondly, Helen is posh. This is something she shares with Lynley - they met at Oxford, they both have loaded parents, she dresses immaculately, she's taken over Daddy's company, she's nearly always clutching a large glass of wine. I have no objection to spoilt rich girl characters (hello Mary Crawley, Blair Waldorf etc etc who are my faves) but she is giving me kdrama SFL rich ex-girlfriend vibes in the way she is presented. And in 2025 it's quite hard to feel overly invested in a character with her background unless she's nuanced and well-characterised. Lynley is also posh - he's literally going to inherit an earldom - but because he's a POV character and he's balanced by working class Havers, we see flaws and development and interest in him which we don't get in Helen. Instead she just becomes something of a stereotype.
Final point is that this is poor writing decisions. Man and woman, both conventionally attractive, with similar background and values reconnect after a decade, already friends with attraction, decide to form a romantic relationship. This is pretty normal and decent and if it happened IRL you'd be rooting for them. However, in fiction, it's simply boring. In fiction, for a relationship to be worth investing in, it has to have a purpose, usually to help the characters develop individually. Helen does not influence or change Lynley at all. He has a date with her, is called away by a case and appears entirely unmoved. She does not challenge his world view. She does not inspire any character development. Considering her only role is "girlfriend", this is a bit of a fail.
Lynley and Havers do not (currently) have romantic tension and I believe in the books they never do. Whether the show if it's renewed will keep or change that, I don't know. However, as detective partners and growing friends, they are far more compelling because they contrast each other and their viewpoints influence the other. That is good fiction, that is what people want to see.
I don't know if Helen will return in further seasons but I hope she doesn't. Bloody annoying character. Pointless. Grates on me so much!
(Irrelevant kdrama thought but Lynley and Havers are a very kdrama-coded couple. He's a secret heir police officer who lives in a sterile modern box on his own and listens to classical music and broods over his family estrangement except when his fancy but annoying girlfriend turns up for wholesome meal times in the sterile box house. She's poor but with a loving but dysfunctional family in a colourful and well-loved home. Father is ill and caring for him conflicts with her job. They bond over the trauma of both losing their brothers. All we need now is for her to have a best male friend who's secretly in love with her and for her and Lynley to have met as children in a traumatic event that led to Havers deciding to become a police officer to write an ancient wrong. Perhaps Lynley killed her brother in a freak fox hunting accident. Who knows.)
