a jolly fun adaptation – just a shame no one told its leading lady

Linda ought to be exasperating, however on this adaptation she is just annoying. Mitford’s novel is a hilarious depiction of the higher lessons, however bittersweet notes creep in as the ladies develop up, and frustration on the societal expectations positioned on ladies of a sure background is detectable (though Mitford would by no means be so widespread as to bash one over the top with such issues). Half of the forged – Scott, Dominic West because the Radletts’ roaring patriarch and John Heffernan because the health-obsessed Davey – throw themselves into the comedy with gusto; the scenes at Alconleigh, with West presiding over a mad family impressed my Mitford’s personal, are a deal with. But it surely typically appears as if James and Beecham consider themselves to be showing in a po-faced, joke-free interval drama, which makes for an uneven tone.

It’s unattainable to adapt a basic in these occasions with out including some quirks. So this one has a glam rock soundtrack (which truly works fairly nicely) and a few mannered directorial work from Mortimer, who has clearly been watching Wes Anderson movies on her days off. She has additionally taken a risqué line from a Mitford letter to Evelyn Waugh, regarding a portray of Lady Jane Gray, and shoehorned it into the script. Mortimer herself seems in a superb cameo as Fanny’s rackety mom, The Bolter. Her different casting choices embody giving roles to her finest pal, Dolly Wells, to her two youngsters, and her mom.

The BBC has, fortunately, chosen to not take away Uncle Matthew’s politically incorrect pronouncements, which means that West has a whale of time yelling about Huns, dagoes and wops. However the script does ram residence the stuff about ladies, just in case you didn’t spot it. “Fortunately married or unhappily married – that’s it, that’s the selection in case you’re a girl,” Fanny tells her husband. And whereas, on the web page, Linda’s absolute lack of curiosity in her daughter passes rapidly by as merely one other facet of her character, right here there are indicators of postnatal melancholy.

Episodes two and three really feel like a little bit of a chronological slog by way of the years. Linda falls in love with a pompous Tory banker, then a good-looking Communist, and at last a dreamy Frenchman. All through, the costumes and units are beautiful. There’s one scene by which Linda sits in a truck at a refugee camp and appears for all of the world like she’s on a Vogue picture shoot.

The unlucky real-life enterprise between James and the married West (the 2 have been photographed kissing in Rome final yr) can’t assist however pop into one’s thoughts. It’s the type of gossip that actually would have brought about a sensation within the Hons cabinet.