| Recensione del 1984.
'MASTERPIECE' TRADITION ENDURES
By Lee Winfrey
(Philadelphia Inquirer, October 28, 1984)
The much-admired Masterpiece Theater series will begin its 14th season on television tonight with a seven-hour mini-series titled Barchester Chronicles.
Barchester Chronicles, adapted from two novels by Anthony Trollope, fits the pattern of many past hits on Masterpiece Theater: produced in England, superbly acted, and offering a thoughtful, intelligent view of the world instead of the violent and/or stupid imitations of life that appear so often elsewhere on TV.
Barchester Chronicles will premiere tonight at 9 on PBS. Weekly one-hour episodes will follow in the same time slot until the mini- series concludes Dec. 9.
Although Masterpiece Theater host Alistair Cooke calls him "one of the three or four greatest English novelists of the 19th century," Trollope is a dim and neglected literary figure for most readers today. As a Victorian novelist, he wrote without recourse to specific sex or bloody violence, specializing in solid examinations of the English social structure and the behavior of typical people within it.
Today, Trollope's value - one that he shares with his greater contemporary, Charles Dickens - rests on his gift for creating characters who carry on just like people we see around us every day. Human nature and behavior have, fundamentally, not changed in the century since Trollope and Dickens died. A few new cultural trimmings have been added, but that's about it.
Barchester Chronicles is based upon Trollope's first successful novel, The Warden, published in 1855, and his funniest one, Barchester Towers, which came out two years later. Essentially, the first two episodes of Barchester Chronicles are drawn from The Warden and the last five from Barchester Towers, with mostly different supporting casts for each division. The star of the whole show, though, from beginning to end, is one of the finest character actors alive today: Donald Pleasence. Within the framework of his age (he turned 65 this month), he can play just about anything. Pleasence's best-known work dates to the 1960s: on stage as Davies, the tramp in Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker (1961), and as Arthur Goldman, the Nazi war criminal who was the title character in The Man in the Glass Booth (1968), and as Blofeld, one of the most menacing villains ever faced by James Bond, in the 1967 movie, You Only Live Twice.
One of the measures of a good character actor is that Pleasence's role in Barchester Chronicles is not anything like those previous parts at all. Tonight he plays the Rev. Septimus Harding, a sweet and almost saintly old man whose major problem is that he tries, every day and in every way, to truly behave like a Christian.
Even his fellow clergymen think Harding goes too far with this rash behavior. "You are a pure man adrift among sinners," one tells him. Another advises him, "You really must stop trying to see the other fellow's point of view. It's your worst fault."
When the mini-series opens tonight, Harding is living quietly and peacefully in the fictional city of Barchester, where he is choirmaster at the cathedral and warden at Hiram Hospital, a retirement home for old men. A widower, he lives with his younger daughter, Eleanor Harding, played by Janet Maw.
Harding's problems in the first two episodes arise from two reformers possessed of more zeal than mercy, a young doctor named John Bold and a crusading newspaper reporter called Tom Towers. Because they despise the Church of England and want to reduce its power, they strike at Harding, accusing him of cheating his hospital patients.
Harding survives the worst that Bold and Towers can deal out to him, only to be faced in the last five episodes of Barchester Chronicles with two of the most despicable characters ever created in English literature, Mrs. Proudie and Obadiah Slope.
Mrs. Proudie is a stern, stiff, cold and merciless woman with a voice like flint and a total indifference to the happiness or welfare of anyone except herself and her henpecked husband, a bishop who becomes Harding's superior. Geraldine McEwan's mastery of this frigid role is so complete that it is literally infuriating to watch her. A viewer's sympathies gush automatically toward whomever Mrs. Proudie brings under her glare.
Mrs. Proudie is abetted by Slope, a slimy social climber who works as her husband's chaplain. Slope is so oily one imagines he would leave film on your hand if you shook it. Probably the only reason Slope is less odious than Mrs. Proudie is that he has less power to do ill. As it is, Alan Rickman in this role capitalizes on every opportunity to behave offensively. On many current weekly series, a stock character is the hateful boss. If you are under the impression that this TV stereotype is worn out, tune in for Mrs. Proudie and Slope, who will first appear on Barchester Chronicles on Nov. 11. One of the differences between hackwork and art is the contrast between the way series bosses are crudely handled and the masterful way that Trollope presents and employs Mrs. Proudie and Slope.
Blessed are the meek, because Harding endures although Mrs. Proudie and Slope do their worst. Besides his sweet daughter Eleanor, who always stands in his support, Harding gets unexpected help from Madeline Vesey-Neroni, a local busybody who loves to manipulate people toward what she thinks are their best interests. Susan Hampshire sparkles unfailingly in this role. Hampshire has previously specialized in bitch roles, winning three Emmy Awards for her portrayals of Sarah Churchill in The First Churchills, Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair, and Fleur Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga. If Harding could see this show, he would probably smile benevolently to see how well Hampshire has reformed in her role as the helpful Madeline.
Another character who attempts to help Harding is his son-in-law, Archdeacon Grantly, sharply played by Nigel Hawthorne. But the archdeacon normally fails to get through to Harding because Grantly's advice is too coldly realistic.
In particular, Grantly is exasperated that Harding cares so little about his salary. In Grantly's opinion, "If honest men didn't squabble for money in this world of ours, then dishonest men would get it all."[]
|
)
