Lingering British Nostalgia

Thanks in part to ABC2, I have been having a bit of an overdose of period drama. First up was The Jewel in the Crown, which was sort of a TV event in the 80s, post which everyone went out and ploughed through the Raj Quartet. This time around I watched it intermittently. The episodes I watched raised a number of questions. Like, was Art Malik the first subcontinental type likely to appeal to all womanhood? Did he have a Japanese girl fan club? Is Judi Dench the new Peggy Ashcroft i.e. called upon to do duty whenever an old with acting chops is required? And whatever happened to Geraldine James, who looked crisply efficient even when snogging Charles Dance? IMBD of course has the answer. Is Saeed Jaffrey just plain annoying or a likeable ham? I am tending to the latter. How did we ever think Tim Piggott-Smith was "excellent" as Merrick? Must Englishman be allowed to pose as European types, accents and all? Answer: No. Will there be a film remake? Unlikely, the Raj has become boring on all fronts. But if they do, can Sendhil play Hari Kumar?! In a more serious vein, the series is a bit creaky in parts but holds up quite well. And it’s nice to see “India in the 80s” locales. But no subaltern deconstruction here, for that is even more boring and obsolete than the British Raj.

And now they are screening The Forsyte Saga. I didn’t plough through the book but a friend did, back in the 80s. I have a soft spot for it because while said friend fed me portions of the book, we were slowly moving towards falling in love (yes folks, the way to a literary girl’s heart is through - a book!). I don’t know how faithful the series is to the book but I will say this - while the author won a Nobel Prize, the TV series approximates a very pretty, overblown Edwardian soap opera. Cold fish Soames is married to pretty ice cube Irene who thaws when she meets dashing architect Bosinney. Architect dies. Edwardian hippie Jolyon, cast out by family no thanks to cousin Soames, then snags Irene. Soames and Jolyon feud. Have children. God, must we watch the children’s storylines too? Yes, you must, because everything and everyone is so – pretty. Galsworthy, the author, sets out to create the world’s most unsympathetic husband in Soames – rumour is he is based on the guy Mr. G was cuckolding. The friend who fed me portions of the book felt sorry for Soames. Watching the series I can only concur. It doesn't help that Damian Lewis, the actor playing Soames, plays him as a cold fish who is so inexplicably alluring that you expect Irene to discover the smouldering volcano behind that starched front followed by smackeroos all around. Or is that from another soap opera?

Watching period drama makes me think a bit about the books they are based on. Are these books now only popular in former British colonies? While Indian colleges presumably teach fusty classics left behind in 1947, has contemporary Britian itself moved on to Irvine Welsh and Jordan territory? Quite likely. On the other hand, they do keep churning out period adaptations from the nth Austen adaptation to obscure ones like Lark Rise to Candleford. So perhaps a certain kind of nostalgia for a British past remains in the UK and here. But what if ABC2’s habitual viewers are expats with an English education and local olds who collect royal memorabilia? Sobering thought!