Barchester

by PATLOWRY

(Women's Wear Daily, Oct. 24, 1984)

 

With all the talk about keeping religion out of politics, here comes Masterpiece Theatre (PBS, Oct. 28) with a witty, irreverent rendering of Anthony Trollope's novels "The Warden" and "Barchester Towers, " which deal with the political intrigue within the l9th-century Church of England.

This is a BBC-at-its-best production, perfectly cast to the smallest part - although the choice of Donald Pleasance as the gentle Septimus Harding may seem an offbeat one - until, that is, you see him make the character his own.

Harding, as his pleasantly dotty Bishop Grantly (David Gwillim) shrewdly observes, "has persistent bouts of Christianity," although he has grown soft as warden of an almshouse for 12 old men, a job in which he does little for 800 pounds. Nepotism is involved Since Harding's daughter (Angela Pleasance) is married to the worldly and scheming archdeacon Dr. Grantly (Niger Hawthorne), son of the bishop.

Enter the self-righteous reformer John Bold and his publisher sidekick, Tom Towers (George Costigan), who have decided the 800 pounds rightfully belong to the 12 indigent old men. They launch their campaign to unseat Harding in the crusading newspaper The Jupiter - which Dr. Grantly scornfully says is the equivalent in England "to what the Czar is in Russia or the mob in America."

Their brutal attacks on Harding both alienate his daughter Eleanor (Janet Maw), who was engaged to BoldÄand convince Harding The Jupiter is correct and he is corrupt. All is tidily resolved in the second hour, with Trollope even- handedly dispensing jibes at all contingents - lawyers, reformers and men of the cloth.

By the time the first hour (all I previewed) of the second novel draws to an end, the old bishop is dead, succeeded by the ineffectual Dr. Proudie (Clive Swift), whose virago of a wife (Geraldine McEwan) teams up with the new bishop's slippery chaplain, Obadiah Slope (Alan Rickman), to run the parish. To music-loving Harding's horror, Slope would banish from the church "choruses and incantations that obscure God's word in this age of reason." He is also wooing the now-widowed Eleanor Bold, but casting an appreciative eye on the flirtatious invalid Signora Neroni (Susan Hampshire) - surely enough intrigue to keep the plot merry boiling for the next four hours.

Thank the Lord - and the BBC - for this contribution to TV enlightenment.

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page