Trollope's third Barchester Chronicles novel is one of his best and whilst marriage is again at the centre of the plot he filled his novel with over 600 pages of craftily built mystery, deceit and psychological play.
Unfortunately a three 30 minute episode mini series cannot give justice to that. The twists are revealed to early, large sections of the journey are cut leaving a rather predictable and somewhat unfulfilling package for TV.
Mary is kept from ever meeting Roger Scratcherd in the book which is a huge part of the dynamics between Scratched and Thorne.
She only meets the Scratcherds after Sir Roger had died.
Here they have rewritten that which removes much of the intrigue and setup for the final will.
Beautiful settings with a collection of gorgeous country houses, a reasonable bunch of actors but they don't have a lot to be work with because the script is clumsy, not true to the novel and overall rushed.
Julian Fellows is better working with a longer series and this should have been written over 10 episodes.
Unfortunately Fellows also had a habit of delivering more soap opera than period classic. Hence much of the psychological drama of the original is replaced here with inane character behaviour and overall banality.
Andrew Davies is the master of squeezing eipc classics into mini series without feeling you've lost anything from the novel. He would have done a better job here than Fellows and McCormack.
Unfortunately a three 30 minute episode mini series cannot give justice to that. The twists are revealed to early, large sections of the journey are cut leaving a rather predictable and somewhat unfulfilling package for TV.
Mary is kept from ever meeting Roger Scratcherd in the book which is a huge part of the dynamics between Scratched and Thorne.
She only meets the Scratcherds after Sir Roger had died.
Here they have rewritten that which removes much of the intrigue and setup for the final will.
Beautiful settings with a collection of gorgeous country houses, a reasonable bunch of actors but they don't have a lot to be work with because the script is clumsy, not true to the novel and overall rushed.
Julian Fellows is better working with a longer series and this should have been written over 10 episodes.
Unfortunately Fellows also had a habit of delivering more soap opera than period classic. Hence much of the psychological drama of the original is replaced here with inane character behaviour and overall banality.
Andrew Davies is the master of squeezing eipc classics into mini series without feeling you've lost anything from the novel. He would have done a better job here than Fellows and McCormack.