I've been revisiting some of the 1991 remake episodes of our beloved series. I was tickled to see that the writers brought back the old notion of a Tarot card identified by the Countess du Pres as "the wicked woman." As we've discussed on a number of occasions on this forum, there is no such card in any orthodox edition of the Tarot.
I had speculated that the Countess may have been in the habit of regarding one of the standard cards of the Tarot as "the Wicked Woman" because it tended to reveal the presence of a female intent on mischief. I believe I speculated that the card might have been one of the Queens.
I was amused to see two different episodes in which the Countess exclaimed "the wicked woman!" in the midst of a Tarot reading and on both occasions, the camera showed us which card she had just drawn. On the first occasion it was the Queen of Pentacles, and on the second, the Queen of Swords.
Of course, there is still a broad streak of anachronism here. There were no commercially available tarot decks around in the 1780s/90s, and a French aristocrat such as the Countess would have undoubtedly commissioned her own deck. It would have given the French names for the Major and Minor Arcana. Pentacles did not come into play on Tarot cards until the publication of the so-called "Rider Waite Deck" (the work of mystic and artist Pamela Colman Smith, working from descriptive outlines supplied by Golden Dawn initiate and master A. E. Waite) in 1910. A deck created in the 1780s or earlier would like have used coins (deniers) in the suit that eventually became diamonds in standard playing cards and pentacles in most Tarot decks. This was the case with the Marseilles deck and the popular Swiss "IJJ" deck around 1800--either would have been a suitable prop for the Countess to use. Instead, however, the production crew provided her with what looks like a typical 1980s "Aquarian Age" type deck, complete with card designations in English.
Well, after all, the show was "filmed on location in Beverly Hills"!
I have to say that this time around, I was more impressed than I expected to be by Lysette Anthony's performance as Angelique. It's really unfortunate that the breakneck pace of the series, and the calibre of the scripts, did not give her more to do in the role. I've seen her in UK productions and she's a fine craftswoman as an actress.
G.
