The Pallisers [TV] (1974)
Directed by Ronald Wilson, Hugh David

Film Review

The Pallisers was among the most prestigious of drama series made for British television in the 1970s and continues to be held in high esteem, one of the most fondly remembered of BBC's 'classic serial' dramatisations.  The series ran to 26 episodes of 50 minutes each and spanned all six instalments in a series of lengthy novels written by Anthony Trollope between 1864 and 1879 featuring the aristocratic politician Plantagenet Palliser and his mischievous, ill-matched wife Lady Glencora. The task of adapting a literary tome that runs to around four thousand pages would prove a daunting undertaking for any writer but Simon Raven pulled off this remarkable feat with considerable élan, although Trollope purists will doubtless curse his name for the alterations and omissions he was bound to make in the course of his heroic endeavour.  Raven's brazen 'soapification' of one great work of literature is unlikely to satisfy most people with the letters 'D.Litt' after their name but it doubtless achieved the desired result of bringing Trollope's finest series of novels to the masses.

The first half of the series concerns itself with the first two Palliser novels - Can You Forgive Her? (1864) and Phineas Finn (1869).  Directed by Hugh David these episodes proceed at a leisurely pace and are mostly faithful to Trollope's original text, the series beginning with a spectacular exterior sequence which introduces the principal characters at a grand garden party.  The pace picks up markedly by Episode 13 (by which time Ronald Wilson has taken over as director) and there then seems to be a desperate scrabble to cram in the last four novels of the series into an impossibly small space. The final Palliser novel The Duke's Children (1879) comes off worst and is barely stretched to two episodes, which is just as well given that it probably rates (at least in plot terms) as the most pointlessly repetitive novel in the English language.  The best three of the Palliser novels - The Eustace Diamonds (1873), Phineas Redux (1874) and The Prime Minister (1876) - are also slightly short-changed, with character motivations often skated over to the detriment of the narrative.  Trollope's Lizzie Eustace is much nastier on the printed page than she is here, and the great set piece of Phineas Redux (namely the trial scene) feels needlessly curtailed.

In spite of the astonishing degree of plot compression, The Pallisers still manages to move at a far slower pace than today's television viewers are used to, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.  With over 20 hours of runtime to play with, there is time for characters and intrigue to develop in a rich and satisfying way, with none of the haste and gross over-simplification (to say nothing of the poor diction and excessive use of music) that characterise much of today's television drama.  And with such a distinguished cast (including both long established divas and an eye-popping cavalcade of rising talent) how could the series fail to be anything other than compulsive viewing?

Susan Hampshire was born to play the part of Lady Glencora although she was not the actress who was originally cast for the role.  That honour went to Hayley Mills, who pulled out just a few weeks before location filming was due to commence after giving birth to her first son, Crispian Mills.   Having played a principal role in another ambitious and groundbreaking television serial, The Forsyte Saga (1967), Hampshire initially had reservations about making a similar commitment to a long serial but proved to be an inspired casting choice, bringing vitality, depth and a dangerous unpredictability to her portrayal of Trollope's greatest fictional heroine.  As challenging as the part of Lady Glencora may be, any actress who is blessed (or burdened) with interpreting her at least has the advantage that she has the audience on her side.  The same can hardly be said of the other main protagonist in the drama, the chronically dull and tediously righteous Plantagenet Palliser.

Overly concerned with propriety and his grand designs for his nation (foremost of which is a mad scheme to introduce a system of decimal currency), Plantagenet is a desiccated husk of a man, one of those high-minded Victorians who loathes people but selflessly devotes himself to humanity (providing he can hold onto his wealth).  To play such an unprepossessing soul as this, as Trollope conceived him but with that essential spark of humanity so that we may sympathise with him, was the challenge that faced Philip Latham when he took on the role, and it is to the actor's credit that he managed to do just this. It helped that Latham was well-known to television viewers at the time, mainly through his likeable role in the long-running series The Troubleshooters (1965-1972).  A less familiar actor would have had a much harder time winning his audience round and the production would doubtless have sunk as a result.  Latham would go on to play a similar aristocratic patrician role in another hugely popular television series,  The Cedar Tree (1976-1978).

It is the developing relationship between Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora which provides the essential thread that binds together the 26 episodes of the series.  The couple's trials and tribulations serve to illuminate and link the self-contained stories that run in parallel, each taking up between three and five episodes.  Of these, the most substantial is the poignant love triangle involving Irish political gigolo Phineas Finn (a man with a tragic knack of falling foul of intrigue of every kind - amorous, political and criminal), the cruelly fated Lady Laura Standish (who loves nothing better than to play the aggrieved martyr) and Germanic social outsider with a heart of gold, Madame Max Goesler, played respectively by Donal McCann, Anna Massey and Barbara Murray.  Murray's Madame Max proves to be the most likeable and convincing character in the series, the one who succeeds where Glencora fails, to humanise Plantagenet Palliser.

Moving on to the supporting cast, it is hard to know where to begin.  Roland Culver deserves a special mention for his exquisite turn as the old Duke of Omnium, and Roger Livesey (fondly remembered as Powell and Pressburger's Colonel Blimp) has no difficulty stealing every one of his scenes as the doddering Duke of St.Bungay.  Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons show up late in the serial in what looks scarily like a dry run for their respective roles in another major television adaptation, Brideshead Revisited, seven year later.  Meanwhile, another rising star Derek Jacobi provides comedic value by the cartload as the hopelessly inept suitor Lord Fawn, just a few years before he secured his career-making role in the BBC drama series I, Claudius.  Peter Sallis, Martin Jarvis, Penelope Keith, June Whitfield, Donald Pickering and Edward Hardwicke are just some of the familiar names that grace this sumptuous production, which boasts some deliciously nasty villains, played with relish (and varying degrees of seductive charm) by Clifford Rose, Gary Watson, Sarah Badel, Anthony Ainley and Stuart Wilson.

Period drama was a domain in which the BBC led the way throughout much of the 1970s, and the expertise of the company's in-house set and costume designers is very much in evidence throughout The Pallisers, showing a remarkable commitment and attention to detail.  Only in a few scenes, where the directors become a little too ambitious, do the budgetary constraints become noticeable, with unconvincing painted backdrops standing in for exotic locations which the production couldn't reach on a BBC budget.  The flipping between videotape and 16mm film for the exterior scenes is also somewhat jarring and was doubtless dictated by financial expediency (ideally the series would have been shot entirely on videotape, the standard medium for studio recording).  These are, however, minor quibbles.  In all other respects, The Pallisers represents the highest in artistic achievement in British television of the mid-1970s.  Forty years on, this jewel from the heyday of British TV drama continues to be compelling viewing and puts most of what we now see on television to shame.

Film Synopsis

In the 1860s, Plantagenet Palliser is the heir to a fabulously wealthy dukedom and the most eligible bachelor in England, but he is more preoccupied with his duties as a member of parliament than the inescapable prospect of wedlock.  Through the connivance of various relatives he is mated with Lady Glencora M'Cluskie, a beautiful young heiress who has already given her heart to a far less worthy noble, the spendthrift idler Burgo Fitzgerald.  Lady Glencora's close friend Alice Vavasor is determined not to be coerced into a marriage against her will, and opts to marry her recklessly ambitious cousin George instead of the dull but respectable John Grey.  As Alice comes to realise the error of her choice, Lady Glencora finds she cannot love Palliser and plans to elope with Burgo, her one true love.  To save his marriage Palliser must give up the prize he has longed for, to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Touched by this sacrificial gesture, Glencora agrees to submit to what she knows will be a loveless marriage but resolves that her children will not suffer the same fate...