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"George Eliot writes scenes which you can almost lift off the page and give
the lines of dialogue to actors and you have a scene that couldn't be improved
on by any scriptwriter, I believe." In praising Eliot's apparent gift for drama,
Louis Marks, the producer of the BBC's 1994 serialisation of Middlemarch, may
appear to be slightly denigrating the role of the novel's adapter, but in fact
the choice of Andrew Davies to dramatise this production proved inspired. Davies
had scripted successful adaptations before (To Serve Them All My Days, BBC,
1980-81; House of Cards, BBC, 1990), but this was his first attempt at a classic
novel. The discovery of his latent talent for condensing and energising works of
English literature led him from here to the acclaimed Pride and Prejudice (BBC,
1995), and to a long string of successes thereafter.
Davies' skill is much in evidence in Middlemarch. The adaptation is, for the
most part, remarkably faithful, and he incorporates Eliot's themes, such as the
faltering advance of social reform in the 1830s, to create a convincing
background to the human drama. When necessary, he makes characters and events
more palatable to a modern audience. Dorothea Brooke, for instance, in the novel
an occasionally priggish heroine, becomes a warmer figure. In this case, credit
must also go to Juliet Aubrey's performance, which breathes life into a
character constrained by her sex in expressing herself emotionally and in
finding an outlet for her altruism. While the visuals are conventionally
beautiful, with interiors carefully recreated and photographed to resemble Dutch
paintings, Davies simplifies the narrative structure and chops up the sedate
rhythms of Eliot, giving each episode the dramatic climax deemed necessary for
modern television serials.
This popularising approach was not uniformly welcomed. On the one hand,
purists disparaged the perceived lapse into soap opera dynamics, while other
critics complained of a lack of boldness. The BBC, however, was rewarded with
precisely what it sought: a high profile ratings success. Middlemarch cost the
then-considerable sum of £6 million (equivalent to the budget of the
Merchant-Ivory film Howard's End, 1992), and was an attempt to distinguish
itself from a disappointing sequence of period dramas, such as Scarlet and
Black (BBC, 1993). By emulating the lavish detail of 'heritage cinema'
productions, Middlemarch refreshed the public's appetite for classic
adaptations, and opened up a new seam of drama material.
Fintan McDonagh
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1. Lydgate and Rosamond marry (2:40)
