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Produced to mark the centenary of Trollope's death in 1882, Alan Plater's
adaptation spans the first two (of seven) novels in the author's Barchester
series, The Warden and Barchester Towers. The result is, simply, one of the best
television literary adaptations ever made - sophisticated drama for grown-ups,
which is also very funny, although the material - obscure 19th century church
politics - sounds unpromising. The humour, of course, arises from Trollope's
great understanding of flawed human nature, expressed through some sublime
characterisation: the perpetually splenetic Archdeacon Grantly, the oily and
ambitious Slope, the ineffectual and henpecked Bishop Proudie and his proud and
prudish wife. Plater is the ideal adapter for this, even though he took much of
his dialogue directly from the novel.
But the series almost didn't happen; it was a last-minute substitute for a
more expensive plan to adapt Stendhal's The Scarlet and Black (ultimately made
in 1993). An earlier Trollope adaptation, The Pallisers (BBC, 1974), had been a
great success but producers feared audiences would not warm to the themes of the
Barchester novels. Plater himself had never read them before, but he found they
had a universality because they dealt with all the potentially comic human
failings of pride, greed, envy, anger, lust - and this in those who were
supposedly pious, charitable and virtuous! They seemed modern. One senses the
relish with which Plater writes Slope's first sermon (which is against church
music), which Trollope himself omitted to do.
The casting of the main characters is pure joy and has some successful
surprises. Donald Pleasence, familiar from many menacing roles, is delightful as
the benign, music-loving and high-principled Warden, who plays an imaginary
cello in moments of stress and can be powerful in his rare outbursts of anger.
In Barchester Towers, Mrs Proudie is physically large and intimidating;
Geraldine McEwan is petite and feminine, but steely and terrifying - she swishes
a mean skirt. Alan Rickman is too attractive for Slope but is suitably creepy in
his hypocrisy (compare Uriah Heep in Dickens' David Copperfield). Susan
Hampshire also scores strongly as upstaging temptress Madeline Neroni, Mrs
Proudie's arch rival. McEwan and Nigel Hawthorne were successfully reunited
three years later in very different roles for Mapp and Lucia (ITV, 1985).
Recently, Trollope seems to be back in fashion again, with two major series
from the BBC: The Way We Live Now (2001) and He Knew He Was Right
(2004).
Janet Moat
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1. Extract (5:11)
