Matthew Macfadyen: When love and class collide: Sumptuous Sunday night TV returns with a new four-part adaptation of Howards End, EM Forster’s tale of romance across the social divide

Daily Mail
Nicole Lampert For Weekend Magazine
PUBLISHED: 18:31 EDT, 3 November 2017 | UPDATED: 18:31 EDT, 3 November 2017

The setting is as splendid as you’d expect for the BBC’s latest costume drama.

Just outside the stunning stately home in the grounds of the picturesque, 5,000-acre West Wycombe Estate in the Chiltern Hills, there’s a marquee overlooking the lake.

Inside, it’s beautifully decorated with intricate winding flowers flowing from ornate Edwardian vases, and the table is laden with vintage crystal champagne glasses, along with decorative platters of fruit and cakes baked to the recipes of Victorian cook Mrs Beeton.

The table, and indeed the stage, is set for one of the most pivotal and dramatic scenes in the new adaptation of EM Forster’s novel Howards End – the wedding of rich businessman’s daughter Evie Wilcox to Percy Cahill at her family’s country estate, Oniton.

By the end of the reception, however, the three very different families the story centres on will have collided to disastrous effect.

And as the millions who’ve read Forster’s book or wallowed in the glorious 1992 Merchant Ivory film will know, what follows is destitution, tragedy, manslaughter and incarceration.

Despite Forster’s book being 107 years old, the themes still feel uncannily modern. The story revolves around three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century – the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the colonies, the half-German Schlegel siblings Margaret, Helen and younger brother Tibby, bohemian intellectuals who have much in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group, and the Basts, an impoverished young couple from a lower-class background. Howards End, Mrs Wilcox’s beloved ancestral home – albeit a pile far less grand than Oniton – is almost a character in its own right too, becoming integral to the complex relationships between these three very different strata of society.

And this new four-part adaptation shows just how timeless, and at times brutal, the tale is.

‘Our series has been written to be deliberately not too earnest. In some ways it doesn’t feel like a period drama at all,’ says Hayley Atwell, who plays the central character of Margaret Schlegel in the drama, which has been adapted by American Kenneth Lonergan who won a BAFTA earlier this year for his film Manchester By The Sea.

‘We were all told not to watch the Merchant Ivory film because this was going to be very different. Despite the constrictions of the costumes and the period, we did feel we wanted to make it accessible to modern audiences by not making it feel mannered.’

Even Emma Thompson, who played Margaret in the 1992 film, told Hayley (who played Emma’s character’s daughter in the 2008 film version of Brideshead Revisited) not to refer to the Merchant Ivory version. ‘She said, “Don’t watch the film. She is you and you are she and she is you.”’

That’s not to say this lavish drama skimps on the things period fans love. There are plenty of corsets and bonnets, beautiful houses, high teas and even a former Mr Darcy in Matthew Macfadyen playing the businessman Henry Wilcox.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5046257/A-new-four-adaptation-Howards-End-comes-BBC.html#ixzz4xVThMRGX 
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Jeremy Irons has words about 'The Words' Published: August 29, 2012 1:07 PM (NEWSDAY)

By JOSEPH V. AMODIO. Special to Newsday  

There's a famous tale about Ernest Hemingway -- and the time his wife packed up all his early writings in a suitcase . . . and accidentally lost it on a train. The original manuscripts, all the carbons -- years of work -- gone.

This tale from the days before backup hard drives inspired "The Words," a haunting new drama about writers, romance and plagiarism that opens Sept. 7. It stars Bradley Cooper as a frustrated young writer being trailed by an old man, played by . . . wait . . . is that? Yes, it's Jeremy Irons.

The British icon aged nearly a quarter century to play the mysterious figure. Romantics, of course, still love him from the hit 1980s PBS series "Brideshead Revisited." Kids fear his bloodcurdling voice as the evil lion Scar in Disney's "The Lion King." And villainy fans enjoy "Die Hard: With a Vengeance" (he plays a terrorist), Showtime's "The Borgias" (a scheming pope) or "Reversal of Fortune" (murder suspect Claus von Bülow).

He's won a best actor Academy Award (for "Reversal") and a Tony (for Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing"), among others. Married with two grown children, Irons currently is shooting season 3 of "The Borgias" in Budapest. He spoke by phone with Newsday.


"The Words" is a rather literary film -- quiet, romantic. What encouraged you to make it?

Well, I thought the old man is an enigma, and it's always nice to play enigmas.

Why is that?

It's nice playing with the audience, letting them in slowly. And I thought it would be a bit of a challenge to play a man of that age. It would give me a chance to . . . do what I do, y'know?

I heard you were very particular about your costume.

I didn't want anything new. This is a man who had no interest in his clothing. I said, go to old thrift shops.
Find clothes that have life in them. I still have one of the shirts. I wear it and people say, "That's a wonderful old shirt."

The tale of Hemingway's lost manuscripts -- it's always haunted me.

Oh, terrible. Like losing a child. Terrible.

I guess that's one benefit of being a film actor over a writer -- your work is chronicled. It can't be misplaced.
But it can be forgotten. I remember when my eldest son . . . was young and having a birthday party, and the weather was terrible. So I said, "Why don't you watch a movie? Why not 'Some Like It Hot' -- it's a fantastic film. Marilyn Monroe." And he said, "Who's that?" And I thought . . . how soon they forget.


READ MORE: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/celebrities/jeremy-irons-has-words-about-the-words-1.3935065

Jeremy Irons enjoys late night meal with daughter of former Bosnia leader wanted for alleged war crimes in Serbia By MARTIN HOWDEN (MAIL ON LINE)

As part of film royalty, Jeremy Irons is used to dining with the biggest and brightest of Hollywood talents.

But the Brideshead Revisited star could have bitten more than he can chew after enjoying a slap up meal with the daughter of Ejup Ganic - the controversial former President of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Muslim academic Ganic was accused of playing a central role in the 1992 attack on a Yugoslav army convoy that killed more than 40 people.


Ganic served as both vice-president and president of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina after it broke from the former Yugoslavia, and was arrested at Heathrow Airport in March 2010.

He was released two days later, with the judge claiming that the arrest warrant was politically motivated and granted him bail of £300,000.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2174374/Jeremy-Irons-enjoys-late-night-Croatian-stroll-friends.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Anthony Andrews and Charles Sturridge on Brideshead Revisited 'We'd often be filming in one room of Castle Howard while the public passed by in another' Interviews by Anna Tims (GUARDIAN)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bbwTPq630s&feature=player_embedded

Anthony Andrews, actor

Filming began on Gozo, one of the Maltese islands, which was standing in for Africa. I never forgave them for this, because it meant we started with my character Sebastian's final scenes. So Jeremy Irons [Charles Ryder] and I had to film the bedside scenes in hospital before we'd figured out our characters or built a relationship.

I was tearing my hair out, too, because there were such holes in the script: we were required to make mammoth jumps. The plan had been for a six-hour series but it was impossible to fit this all-encompassing book into such a time frame without skipping some golden parts. So when a pay strike stopped production in 1979, it gave everyone time to take stock. We feared the project would be scrapped; but Granada had such faith in what we were doing that, in the midst of severe cutbacks, they doubled our budget to £10m, gave us permission to shoot the entire book, and let us get on with it.

Because of the delay, however, we lost our director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had a Hollywood commitment. And many locations, including Castle Howard in Yorkshire, became a problem. The owner, George Howard, did not want us to film when the estate was open to the public, but, after negotiations, relented; we'd often be behind the cameras in one room while members of the public passed by in another. We became firm friends with the family and often crashed out at the castle after a wild evening with the sons.


READ MORE:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/18/how-we-made-brideshead-revisited?newsfeed=true

The second season turns its gaze from class war on a great estate to the actual Great War. (Slate)

Downton Abbey, Reviewed

By Troy Patterson|Posted Friday, Jan. 6, 2012, at 3:40 PM ET

“Who knew it would be so much fun to watch a house full of magnificently dressed aristocrats and their servants living all under one roof?” Here comes Laura Linney—lovely in black lace, a gracious hostess strolling before a backdrop like a crimson curtain—to ask a trick question of viewers like you, this Sunday on PBS.

The heathens among my readership may not recall that, a few years ago, PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre—that cherished staple of upper-middlebrow media diets—split into Masterpiece Contemporary, Masterpiece Mystery!, and Masterpiece Classic. Contemporary, now hosted by David Tennant, ranges across genres in a tumultuous quest for West End class and BAFTA glamour.

Masterpiece Mystery!, emceed by Alan Cumming, is where Inspector Morse and Miss Marple cock their eyebrows perspicaciously. Classic, with Linney at the helm and on the prow, is devoted—well, to shows about magnificently dressed aristocrats and their servants.

Some Classic programs are greatish-book adaptations, but Downton Abbey, imported from Britain’s ITV, is original and simply great. As a PBS hit, it rivals 1981’s Brideshead Revisited for cultural impact and may yet outrank as a crossover phenomenon.* Linney’s excitement about this is such that she sighs with bliss and gratitude as she introduces the first episode of its second season.

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Linney reminisces with viewers about their first go-round with Downton, ticking through a brief catalog of passion and worries, of fond hopes and rousing hatreds, of roiling scandals and simmering romances. “We were hooked—and then they all went away,” she says. “It’s a great pleasure for me to say that tonight we return at last to that great country house with its hundreds of rooms.” That is a lot of imaginative space to inhabit as we trot up the steps alongside the handsome hunting dog that serves as the show’s mascot.

 

Part of the appeal of Downton Abbey, like Brideshead before it, lies in its presentation of a grand household as an organism. To be sure, the new series vibrates excitingly on many frequencies, but it specially resonates as a rare hybrid of domestic drama and shelter porn. This genre combines the gratifications of “sheer plutography” (to use a term of Tom Wolfe’s that I’ve elsewhere applied to Brideshead) with the more common pleasures of observing efficient household management. There is action in the setting.

 

The parlors and pantries are theaters of war, and the show stimulates a kind of class warfare in the viewer’s human heart and reptile brain. In the interactions between the man of the house (Robert Crawley, played right honorably by Hugh Bonneville) and his valet (John Bates, played by Brendan Coyle), we discover a rich and intimate fantasy of power, dependence, and dedication, a business relationship with love in it. In the dining room, the caste system is ordered as precisely as a table setting.

 

There is very much else going on besides, with heirs and airs and mustard gas. “It’s 1916,” Linney says, to bring us up to date. “The bonds of social class and tradition are exploding in the trenches of World War I. …” Shortly thereafter, Masterpiece abruptly drops us into an actual theater of war, the Battle of the Somme, with an image of writhing fallen soldiers to linger in your head and their atmosphere. One combatant—Matthew Crawley, heir presumptive to cousin Robert’s earldom—is preparing for a furlough. Back home, ladies hopeful of aiding the war effort are learning how to do things previously considered unladylike, like driving cars and boiling water, activities that complicate the business of husband-hunting. The central question of this domestic drama is: What is correct? That’s the issue animating its droll chatter about manners and its swift playlets about morals. With the coming of the war, the question picks up meaning in the Wilfred Owen sense. When is it fitting to die for your country?

 

The author of Downton Abbey is Julian Fellowes, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, about a house full of magnificently dressed aristocrats and their servants living all under one roof. The earlier work was playfully tricksy and dense with incident. With its murder-mystery engine, its roving friskiness, and its Hollywood-imposter subplot, Gosford Park plays like Upstairs, Downstairs as adapted by M.C. Escher. Its brilliance feels cold and a touch cynical when compared with Downton Abbey’s warm and generous sprawl. Appropriate to the pace and the space of series television, it welcomes you into its intrigues at a walking pace. On TV, a great country house must be a home.

 

*Correction: This piece originally incorrectly referred to Brideshead Revisited as a Masterpiece hit. It was a Great Performances program. (Return.)

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2012/01/downton_abbey_season_2_reviewed_.html

 

 

 

 

Downton Abbey follows US Tradition of Loving British Dramas

September 2011 Last updated at 12:57 ET

Emmys revisited: Downton Abbey follows US tradition

BBC NEWS

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• Winslet and Downton scoop Emmys

It seems Americans love nothing better than an English accent and a period setting, as Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes is all too aware.

Accepting his Emmy award for writing the show, Fellowes thanked the US film industry for "kick-starting" his career by awarding him a screenwriting Oscar in 2002 for Gosford Park, set in the 1930s.

But Fellowes - whose Downton Abbey was broadcast on the PBS network in the US - is not the first British programme-maker to benefit from the American love affair with costume pieces.

Here is a snapshot from the past four decades.

Upstairs Downstairs (1971-1975)

Co-creator Jean Marsh (r) appeared in the ITV original and the BBC's update, pictured here

ITV's drama about a London family and their servants, created by actresses Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins, was a huge global hit and was reportedly seen by an audience of more than a billion.

It garnered a slew of Emmy nominations and won seven, including outstanding drama series in 1974, 1975, and 1977, as well as best actress for Marsh in 1975 for her performance as parlour maid Rose.

Marsh was nominated in this year's Emmys for reprising the role in a three-part 2010 BBC update.

There was also a supporting actor Emmy in 1976 for Gordon Jackson - as Scottish butler Angus Hudson - while, in 1975, the show won the Golden Globe for best TV drama.

The five series of the drama covered the period from 1903 to 1936.

Brideshead Revisited (1981)

Anthony Andrews, right, won a Bafta and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Sebastian Flyte

This 11-part serial, based on Evelyn Waugh's novel of the same name, was a huge hit in the UK when it was broadcast on ITV between October and December 1981.

It tells the story of the friendship between middle-class Oxford undergraduate Charles Ryder, played by a young Jeremy Irons, and hedonistic aristocrat Sebastian Flyte, played by Anthony Andrews, and a cast that also featured Sir John Gielgud.

It won seven Baftas the following year, including best drama series and best actor for Andrews.

The show - repeated in the US on PBS - received 10 Emmy nominations in 1982 and a best supporting actor prize for Sir Laurence Olivier, who only appeared in two episodes as Lord Marchmain.

In 1983, it won a best mini-series prize and best actor, for Andrews at the Golden Globes.

A 2008 film adaptation starred Matthew Goode as Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Flyte.

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Colin Firth missed out on the Bafta for Pride and Prejudice in 1996

Andrew Davies' 1995 BBC One adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel starred one Colin Firth as the dashing Mr Darcy, playing opposite Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth Bennet.

It earned Firth - whose Oscar-winning performance in last year's The King's Speech prove he is at home in tales of yesteryear - a Bafta nomination in 1996.

But on that occasion, Firth was eclipsed by Ehle, who won best actress.

In the same year, it also earned three Emmy nominations and won the award for costume design, but was ignored at the Golden Globes.

Austen's tale was made into a 2005 film by Joe Wright, starring Matthew Macfadyen as Mr Darcy and Keira Knightley as Bennet.

Cranford (2007 - 2009)

The BBC's five-part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels had up to eight millions viewers in the UK regularly tuning in each week to witness the genteel lives of the town's female inhabitants. It later returned for a two-part Christmas special in 2009.

Dame Judi Dench, Lisa Dillon and Dame Eileen Atkins starred in the adaptation of Cranford

Featuring a stellar cast including Dame Judi Dench, Dame Eileen Atkins and Imelda Staunton, it earned a total of 15 Bafta nominations.

It came away with three Baftas in 2008 with a best actress win for Dame Eileen, and also best production design and sound, but failed to pick up anything for the Christmas special.

Across the pond, the series was nominated for eight Emmys in 2008 including acting nods for Dame Judi and Dame Eileen. But only the latter Dame won an award - along with Alison Elliot for outstanding hairstyling.

The Christmas special received another seven Emmy nominations in 2010 with a further nod for Dame Judi. It came away with another two awards, winning best cinematography and costumes in a mini-series, but missed the major acting prizes.

Although the drama was recognised at the Golden Globes with a total of four nominations, it was overlooked on the night.

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