Carey Mulligan Gathers Rocks in a Lesbian Period Drama on SNL

If last night’s Saturday Night Live parody trailer for lesbian period dramas feels familiar, that’s because it liberally spoofs Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite, both of which feature melancholic women who fall in love with their female companions away from the world of men, surrounded by rocky beaches and bathed in candlelight. A doctor diagnoses Carey Mulligan at the beginning of the sketch as needing “seagull sounds, gray air, and long, rocky walks.� She’s admonished by Heidi Gardner for picking rocks and putting them in a basket all wrong, but eventually they hook up and sketch portraits of each other, because this is a lesbian period drama and that’s what you do in a lesbian period drama. “Witness the world’s saddest flirting,� the voice in the trailer compels you, because this is a lesbian period drama, and quality or originality be damned, “you get one a year.�