*For the foreseeable future, some Character Review posts may not be published every Thursday as they have in the past.
*Warning: This post contains spoilers about the characters from the television series World on Fire. Read at your own risk if you have not watched the show.
There is something to be said about a well written, human character. They leap off the page and speak to us as if they were right in front of us, as flesh and blood human beings, instead of fictional creations. Losing a spouse is difficult by itself. Losing a spouse when your children are young is immeasurably harder. On World on Fire, Robina Chase (Lesley Manville) has lived most of her adult life without her late husband. Raising her son, Harry (Jonah Hauer-King) alone, she has ambitions to see him do great things in life.
But like many young men, Harry and his mother do not see eye to eye. She is almost relieved when he takes a job in Poland as a translator. But that does not mean she approves of his choices, especially when it comes to women. Lois Bennett (Julia Brown) is a local girl who Harry has been seeing for some time. After breaking up with Lois, Harry’s new girlfriend is Kasia Tomaszeski (Zofia Wichłacz), a young woman with who he met in Warsaw.
When Harry returns home after the invasion of Poland, he is not alone. He has come with his young brother-in-law. Robina is not happy with her new charge or that Lois is carrying her future grandchild. But the coming war and the changes to her life will open this woman’s once cold heart after years of tucking it away.
To sum it up: Robina is a woman changed by circumstance. First, by the early death of her husband, and then by the changes brought on by the war. It is through those changes that she reveals the loving, giving heart underneath the formerly cold exterior.
Which is why she is a memorable character.
Writergurlny 