'MASTERPIECE THEATRE' SCORES AGAIN

By Ed Siegel

(Boston Globe, October, 1984)

A clergyman is sitting by his father's deathbed with a look alternating between rage and grief. If his father, also a clergyman, dies quickly, the son will inherit the bishopric. If the elderly Grantly lingers, the tottering British government will be replaced and the new prime minister will appoint another bishop.

Such moral ambiguity is rampant in Barchester, a quiet, fictitious town in the west of England that's the setting for Anthony Trollope's Barchester novels, two of which - "The Warden" and "Barchester Towers" - make up the first "Masterpiece Theatre" offering of the year (tomorrow night at 9 on Ch. 2).

After the disasters ("Sons and Lovers," "The Citadel"), mediocrities ("Nancy Astor") and slight successes ("The Irish R.M.") of recent years, "The Barchester Chronicles" represents a return to the glory years of British adaptations, when the likes of "The Six Wives of Henry VIII," ''Elizabeth R" and "Upstairs, Downstairs" were regularly embarrassing American drama and creating born-again Anglophiles with each new series.

"Barchester" is not quite in the same room with such exalted company, but it is knocking at the door. Every character is finely etched, every actor is magnificently hammy.

Donald Pleasence is Septimus Harding, the aggravatingly unassuming warden of the old-age hospital who finds himself caught between the conservative clergy and the progressive reformers, both equally ridiculous in Trollope's eyes. Harding is so unassertive - at least in the first two episodes - that he has to pretend to play the cello whenever he feels wronged.

Yet he is also the moral center of Trollope's universe and in Pleasence's pudgy, capable hands, Harding is much more sympathetic than pathetic. Hollywood has so long typecast Pleasence as a sociopath that it's refreshing to see him return to the character acting he excelled in during the '60s.

Harding and his daughter are the only characters who aren't politicized enough to spend most of their hours scheming after one thing or another. Intrigue is an art form in Trollope's world and there is no shortage of such artists in Barchester.

Most of them don't enter until the third episode when Proudie, the new bishop, is led into town by his Lady Macbeth of a wife (Geraldine McEwan) and his Iago of a chaplain, Obadiah Slope, played in utmost serpentine splendor by Alan Rickman.

There are also the Stanhope siblings, who bring a healthy air of irreverence to counter the clerical connivings. Not that they're any less Machiavellian - Susan Hampshire's Madeleine is not to be outdone on that, or any other, score. An accident may have destroyed her ability to make love, but has only heightened her ability to make mischief, and Hampshire carries out those duties with an undampened, Shavian wit.

All the aforementioned actors would rate a 10, were it not for the scene- stealing magnificence of Nigel Hawthorne, the supercilious Archdeacon Grantly whose father failed to die in time. Although that scene is one of the more serious and shows the younger Grantly at his most complex, his is a mostly comic function. And Hawthorne, who is in all seven episodes, has more more, and far more subtle, comedic tools for looking exasperated than Jackie Gleason. One of the chief targets of his exasperation is his father-in-law, Harding, who has this habit of defending their persecutors. As Grantly lectures him, ''You really must stop trying to see the other person's point of view. It's your worst fault." Later he tells Harding, "If honest men didn't squabble for money in this wicked world, the dishonest would get it all." When Harding wonders what Jesus Christ would say to that, Grantly erupts: "Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it. Stop confusing the issue." Hawthorne, meanwhile, complements each line with the most extraordinary facial explosions and implosions.

"The Barchester Chronicles" also benefits from the talents of producer Jonathan Powell (the two Smiley miniseries) and director David Giles ("Forsyte Saga"). They eschewed the annoying British habit of shooting indoor scenes on videotape and outdoor scenes on film and used videotape for the entire production. Since it was shot mostly on a soundstage, the outdoor scenes suffer from a lack of personality - we never get a good sense for what Barchester looks and feels like - but there is a crisp-cutting continuity to the series that's lacking in most other "Masterpiece Theatres." And as videotape has become the accepted form for situation comedy, it's certainly appropriate for such a Victorian, though timeless, comedy of manners.

 

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page