Stop the Week 19

While in Sheffield a few weeks ago, the friends I was staying with urged me to borrow a boxed set of a Granada-produced adaptation of The Forsyte Saga.

Since it was a Ryan Air flight back to Limoges from Liverpool, space was at a premium, but I found a little niche for it in my bag – mainly because I thought the girls would appreciate it. As a child, I had watched every episode of an epic BBC production. My parents never forgot it and when my siblings and I were scratching around for something to buy them for their 50^th wedding anniversary, we came up with the BBC version of Galsworthy’s saga.

I started watching the re-make more out of a sense of curiosity than keen anticipation. However, I was hooked within half an hour. This week, we finished off the first series and are now hungry for the second. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but – if you haven’t – you durn well should. It’s quite brilliant: lavish production values and superb performances equal the best TV drama.

Soames and Irene, the unhappy couple

Remembering the first production has added spice to the experience, because I can compare performances. Rupert Graves makes a far, far better Jolyon than the rather wooden Kenneth More; Gina McKee knocks Nyree Dawn-Porter into a cocked hat as Irene; and, good as Eric Porter was as the stiff upper Soames, Damien Lewis’s performance is the stuff of legend: he has the ability to make the viewer vacillate constantly between sympathy and loathing. I never tire of quoting David Coleman: ‘Errrrrr, quite remarkable’.

While on the theme of literary classics, my good wife and I have been watching BBC Four’s adaptation of Women in Love. We’ve kept it quiet from The Daughter, just in case there’s a surfeit of rutting involved. Not, you understand, that we try to disavow her of the idea that human beings, even of a parental age, get up to that kind of thing, but because it makes for a little edgy viewing ensemble. You know how it is: when you’re a child, you want to spare your parents the embarrassment; when you’re a parent, you want to spare your child a similar embarrassment.

Mercifully, so far, we’ve been spared the sight of two grown men wrestling in the noddy. Accustomed, as I am, to the indelible image of Oliver Reed and Alan Bates, two out-sized human ape-men cavorting in the buff before a fireplace, the performances of Roy Kinnear’s son, Rory (can you imagine the effrontery of a father adding an ‘r’ to make the name of his son?), and whoever’s playing the heir to the mine owner’s ill-gotten gains, have been subtlety itself – which is also quite remarkable, given that the source material derives from D.H. Lawrence.

Similarly, two of the women in love – the sisters, Ursula and Gudrun – are notches above Glenda Jackson and (I think) Jenny Linden in the film. The third woman, their ma, played by Saskia Reeves, is equally good. The sum of the parts makes for good viewing, although it hasn’t tempted me to dig out the source novels for a re-read.

There was also a classic final in the one-day cricket world cup to enjoy in severely abridged form, which I watched this morning with my hot lemon while mixing up a bowl of pancake mix for the traditional Sunday morning family breakfast. It was nice to see India win it in front of their adoring fans and particularly nice that Sachin Tendulkar’s genius should be rewarded in such a fitting way.

En plus, I was listening quite a lot during the week gone by to some classic ‘cool-school’ jazz in the form of Paul Desmond: the quiet and unassuming alto saxophonist, who played with Dave Brubeck’s quartet during its heyday. Like the great Bill Evans, he was a bespectacled, studious-looking man, who looked more like a civil servant than a jazz musician. But he it was wot wrote the sublime ‘Take Five’: possibly the most recognisable post-war jazz number in the world. Even non-jazzers could probably name that tune in two or three. Desmond moved from the U.S.A. to Toronto for the last years of his too short life – which is fairly remarkable in itself – and continued to cook up music in a quartet that is so cool and minimal it might have persuaded Oliver and Alan to stop their shenanigans, put their clothes back and settle down on the sofa for a glass of red before supper.

‘This is nice, Gerald…’

‘Yes, beats wrestling any day of the week. Chin-chin.’