However, the BBC TV Blog has kindly been in touch with me to ask me to pass on a link to a fascinating piece by production designer Martin Boddinson about how he converted the sets for Lark Rise to Candleford for the interiors in The Night Watch – a real challenge given the very different periods of the two dramas! I know a lot of people who visit my blog are fans of Lark Rise, so thought you might be interested in reading Martin’s piece.

Sir Michael Hordern as Scrooge

Just a quick note to wish everyone who visits my blog a happy and peaceful Christmas break. Over the past few festive seasons I’ve usually watched the Patrick Stewart version of A Christmas Carol, which I have reviewed here in the past, but this year I had a change by watching a 1977 BBC version starring Sir Michael Hordern as Scrooge and John Le Mesurier, best-known as Sergeant Wilson in the much-loved comedy series Dad’s Army, as Marley. I think this is only available on a Dutch DVD or as part of the Charles Dickens BBC Collection, but you can also find it posted on Youtube at the moment.

This is a very small-scale version, packed into just an hour, but I liked it very much – I grew up in the 1970s, and often enjoy adaptations made then. Director Moira Armstrong has made a number of other costume dramas, including some episodes of Lark Rise to Candleford. This short film has a feel of the original illustrations, and also I think all the dialogue in Elaine Morgan’s script is taken from Dickens’ original words. Sir Michael had earlier played Marley in the famous Alastair Sim version (Scrooge, 1951), which is many people’s favourite – I will hope to watch that one soon and compare. Anyway, I get the feeling Sir Michael has great fun as Scrooge, speaking his most outrageous lines in the early scenes with a gleeful wit, and then also making his gradual transformation believable. Le Mesurier doesn’t have very much screen time but his vagueness works well for a ghost, and the special effects are good for the period, I’d say.

John Le Mesurier as Marley

There is a fine support cast – June Brown, famous as Dot in EastEnders, has a chilling cameo as Mrs Dilber, the horrible woman who steals the shirt from Scrooge’s corpse in his vision of the future, while others to watch out for include John Salthouse as the young Scrooge, Zoe Wanamaker as Scrooge’s sweetheart Belle, Bernard Lee as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Tracey Childs, who starred in a BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, as Scrooge’s sister, Fan, and Zelah Clarke, who later starred in a version of Jane Eyre, as Martha Cratchit. Anyway, no time to write a full-length review but I’d recommend this to anyone who gets a chance to watch it, and happy Christmas to all who are celebrating.

Seeing the trailer for the new Jane Eyre reminded me that I hadn’t yet got round to watching the most recent feature film version, from 1996, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt, although I bought the DVD some time back. (I didn’t see it on release because my children were small then and it was hard to get out to the cinema.) I’ve now watched this one and have rather mixed feelings about it – my main problem being, perhaps surprisingly, that it felt too reined-in and not passionate enough. I have always remembered the sensuous romance of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and I suppose I expected something of the same atmosphere in this adaptation – but this is a far quieter film, with much of the emotion kept so far beneath the surface that it all but vanishes.

Anna Paquin as the young Jane

Of course, there is the usual difficulty with cramming a long novel into a single film, that a lot has to be left out. Screenwriters Zeffirelli and Hugh Whitemore have made many of the same cuts to the story as Kay Mellor did in her TV movie version the following year – truncating the opening scenes of childhood and Jane’s years in Lowood, and also cutting back her escape from Thornfield and time with St John Rivers to just a few minutes. I know it is important to keep the focus on Jane and Rochester, but it still seems a shame to lose quite so much.

However, despite being severely cut back, the childhood section does work very well and was probably my favourite part of the film – much to my surprise, as in other versions I’m usually keen to get through this part and on to Thornfield!  Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar for her role in Jane Campion’s The Piano three years earlier, is brilliant as the young Jane, and full of the passion which is muted in the rest of the film.  There’s only a brief glimpse of the red room, but her expression of terror says it all. Then she puts the character’s independence of spirit across vividly in the scenes where she answers the Rev Brocklehurst (John Wood) back, both in front of her aunt and then again at the school. Both Brocklehurst and Aunt Reed (Fiona Shaw) are quieter in this adaptation than in others I’ve seen, maintaining a veneer of politeness and apparently hiding the knowledge of their cruelty to Jane even from themselves. This makes the scene where they condemn her as a liar and decide to send her to Lowood even more chilling. It is all so polite and apparently reasonable, a decision taken over tea and cake.

Anna Paquin and Leanne Rowe as Jane and Helen

The key scene where Jane stands on the stool wearing a placard is there – but there is also another striking scene added in, based on an incident in the book where Mr Brocklehurst orders a pupil with naturally curly red hair to have it all cut off, claiming it is evidence of vanity. In this film, it is Helen (Leanne Rowe) who has the red curls, and the clergyman himself dramatically cuts her hair  off in front of the other children – after seeing it loose while Jane is drawing Helen’s portrait. (She also later draws a portrait of Rochester, creating a parallel between the two people she loves the most.) The light is on Helen’s hair as it is shorn away, making it look like a golden halo. Jane’s hair is also cut off after she intervenes on Helen’s behalf – so the two girls share their martyrdom, as they later share Helen’s death scene. Another change from the book is that, in this version, the cruel teacher, Miss Scatcherd (Geraldine Chaplin) is the headmistress, with the kind Miss Temple (Amanda Root) below her in the pecking order – and so she can’t protect the girls even as much as she does in the novel.

After Helen’s death, the story moves forward and Charlotte Gainsbourg takes over the role of Jane. I must say she looks exactly how I’d always imagined the character, with a sort of  pure, other-worldly quality about her – so that, when Rochester describes her as looking like a nun, it seems right. She also seems very young – she was actually 25 but it is easy to believe she is only 18, and there is a large age gap between her and the 46-year-old William Hurt as Rochester.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Joan Plowright as Jane and Mrs Fairfax

Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, which has also been used in other Jane Eyre adaptations, makes a beautiful setting for Thornfield, and there are some lovely scenes of  Dame Joan Plowright, as Mrs Fairfax, showing Jane round the building. I have to say Plowright makes a very grand, aristocratic Mrs Fairfax, and it is quite  hard to believe that she is a housekeeper rather than the mistress of Thornfield. She does seem to have rather a lot of screen time given the cuts which have had to be made to other aspects of the story – I see the latest version will have another Dame, Judi Dench, as Mrs Fairfax, so it may well be that the same thing will happen in the new adaptation! While Dame Joan is a constant presence, however, Billie Whitelaw only has one or two lines as Grace Poole, which seems a bit of a waste.

The scene of the disrupted wedding

I was looking forward to seeing William Hurt’s take on Rochester, because he is an actor I’ve always liked since seeing his moving performance in The Accidental Tourist. I knew he would be very different from Ciaran Hinds in the 1997 Jane Eyre, because, where Hinds plays Rochester in explosive, ebullient style, it’s Hurt’s key quality to keep his emotion reined in, burning under the surface. However, I have to say that in this film I think he probably reins it in too much – there is only the occasional glimpse of any passion, and it doesn’t help that there are so few conversations between Jane and Rochester. In the novel they are always talking as they fall in love – but in this version they are rather a silent couple, with looks having to do the work of words, and most of the humour that they share is also lost. There is at least one scene where I thought Rochester’s silence works very well, though – Adele (Josephine Serre) is singing and dancing in the way that her mother did, and he is standing in the shadows watching and remembering, with most of him in darkness and just his melancholy face lit up in a reddish glow. The lighting is striking throughout this film – in one scene, where Jane is teaching Adele to draw, she tells her: “Remember, the shadows are just as important as the light.”

The poster which features Blanche instead of Jane

Unfortunately, many of the key scenes of the couple’s courtship do seem rushed to pack them into the film’s 112-minute running time. There are only brief glimpses of Blanche Ingram, played by supermodel turned actress Elle Macpherson – at least one poster for the film ludicrously features Hurt and Macpherson, with Gainsbourg nowhere to be seen! The preparations for the wedding also pass in a couple of minutes – though the wedding itself, and the aftermath where Rochester takes them all to meet his wife, are well done.  Bertha is played by Maria Schneider, who has long, heavy dark hair similar to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s, and also wears a long white dress, so there  is almost a feeling of Jane looking at herself in a distorting mirror.

Jane’s departure after the abortive wedding is rushed, with Rochester hardly given any time to plead for her to stay – and the whole Gothic plot element of her wandering around, starving, until she collapses is completely removed. In this version, Jane decides to go and stay with St John Rivers because she’d already met him earlier as her aunt’s vicar! It might be more realistic than the wild coincidences of the novel, but I feel that something vitally important has been lost as we never see Jane desperate and hungry – or rebuilding her life under another name. A very young Samuel West plays St John, giving him much more sensitivity than the character has had in other versions I’ve seen. Here, I thought the proposal could easily give the impression that he is really  in love with Jane, especially as there is no sign of Rosamond in this version. Rather than ordering her to marry him as a sacred duty, he humbly makes the suggestion, saying he will be content with her affection rather than her love – and his missionary work is only mentioned in passing.  St John also has just one sister here, again as in the later Kay Mellor version. This seems a shame to me as I always think that through the sisterhood between Diana and Mary in their remote country area we glimpse a little of what life would have been like for the Brontës themselves .

The happy ending is poignant, as it always is, with Rochester discovering it is Jane by feeling her hands “Her very fingers!” – but even this is rushed over, with the very minimum of dialogue between the two before we are glimpsing them two years later, with Gainsbourg’s voiceover telling of their married bliss. It’s almost the case that Rochester is blinded one minute and has his sight back the next.

All in all, I did enjoy aspects of this production, and I especially like Anna Paquin and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane, but I don’t think I’m likely to go back to it as much as I will to the Kay Mellor or Sandy Welch versions, because it feels too rushed and leaves too much out. The Kay Mellor version is about the same length but manages to keep a lot more of the central love story and the key emotions.

It’s odd now to think that about a year ago it was being predicted that costume drama would disappear from British TV, and from ITV in particular, as a result of budget constraints. Sadly, it does still seem that TV adaptations of older literary classics are an endangered species, with very few such productions planned in the near future – the BBC is working on The Sisters, based on DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow and Women in Love, and a new version of Winifred Holtby’s South Riding, with a script by Andrew Davies, and that’s about it at the moment. I thought someone was bound to commission a major Dickens adaptation for 2012 to tie in with his bicentenary, but have heard nothing on that front yet – though I’m hoping! (A Tale of Two Cities would probably be my choice, if anyone is wondering.)

However, while Dickens, Austen etc may have disappeared from our TV schedules for the time being, there have been plenty of original new costume dramas in recent months  - with the most successful of the bunch undoubtedly being Downton Abbey, a family saga set above and below stairs in an Edwardian country house, scripted by Julian Fellowes of Gosford Park fame. The show has come in for a fair amount of adverse criticism, some of it for soapy storylines, but some also centred on incredibly minor things like a double yellow line apparently being seen for a millisecond in one episode! However, the series continued to draw an enormous audience and a second season has now been commissioned.

The team below stairs at Downton Abbey

To be honest, I think I’d have to watch the whole mini-series again to begin to write a proper review, and I’m not sure I’ll have the time to do that at the moment.  However, I do want to say that the whole cast did a great job, from Dame Maggie Smith as the impossibly superior Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham to Hugh Bonneville as her son, the Earl of Grantham, Elizabeth McGovern as his American wife, Cora, Michelle Dockery as their eldest daughter, Lady Mary,  Dan Stevens as the heir to the estate, cousin Matthew Crawley and Penelope Wilton as his mother, who soon becomes Violet’s main rival.

Below stairs, everybody’s favourite is Brendan Coyle as John Bates, the valet with a bad leg as the result of a war wound, but Phyllis Logan and Jim Carter are great too as housekeeper Mrs Hughes and butler Mr Carson. I’d like more explanation about the motivation of the two scheming villains below stairs, footman Thomas (Rob James-Collier) and his partner in crime, ladies’ maid O’Brien (Siobhan Finneran), who are both unreasonably determined to get Bates the sack – but maybe more explanations will come in the second season, and the performances of both are excellent anyway.

A central plot element, with the estate looking set to go to a cousin because of an entail which means the family’s daughters can’t inherit, is similar to the initial set-up of Pride and Prejudice, as other commentators have pointed out. There  have also been similarities with other works mentioned in the press, such as an incident at a flower show which is similar to a scene in the movie of Mrs Miniver. However, what really struck me was not so much these similarities as the differences from classic adaptations – because, with no novel to refer back to, Fellowes is able to create his own story and explore whatever interests him, in particular putting a far greater focus on the lives of the servants than most 19th or early 20th-century novels would. It does sometimes seem as if the relationships between the classes are freer and easier in this series than would actually have been the case, for instance with the aristocratic family taking an interest in one of the housemaids who wants to train as a secretary – but there are still moments when the social gulf between the classes is seen all too clearly, most of all at points when any of the servants fear that they could be summarily dismissed.

The first series begins with the news of the sinking of the Titanic and ends with the outbreak of the First World War, meaning the world of Downton Abbey will have changed dramatically by the time the second series begins, and it is likely that far more of the story will move outside the walls of the great house. I’m looking forward to it.

Just to add that I have cable TV and so was lucky enough to be able to see the series with no adverts via the “catch up” service – so it played seamlessly, like a BBC drama. I gather that many viewers were annoyed by having ads every few minutes, which broke the flow and kept on bringing them back to the present day with a bump. Anyway, if you were put off by all the ads, it might be worth giving it a second try on DVD.

David Tennant as Casanova

Oddly enough, there were two versions of Casanova brought to the screen in 2005. The better-known of the two is the lavish movie starring Heath Ledger – I have seen this film, a couple of years ago now, but remember finding it a bit disappointing as a drama, although Ledger was great and I enjoyed the Venetian settings, costumes etc. I should really give it a second try. Anyway, I’ve just belatedly watched all of  the three-part BBC mini-series made the same year, starring David Tennant, Peter O’Toole and Rose Byrne - I’d only seen bits and pieces up to now – and just wanted to write a short posting to say I loved this irreverent version of the story. It isn’t exactly what I’d usually think of as a costume drama, since the characters are very much modern people in 18th-century dress, and the language is very 21st-century too, full of contemporary slang and teasing references to the present day. But I found it  seductively enjoyable - and, perhaps surprisingly given the subject matter, I felt it was ultimately about romance rather than sex.

Peter O'Toole as the older Casanova

The writer, Russell T Davies, also created the revived version of  Doctor Who which starred David Tennant – so it’s not surprising that there is a strong flavour of the hit sci-fi series about this production, with the same fast-moving blend of mischievous humour,  quirkiness, adventure and, at times, underlying melancholy. Tennant’s portrayal of Giacomo Casanova also looks forward to his version of the Doctor, as he plays a flamboyant outsider living on his wits and constantly putting on an act, or a series of acts, but with a vulnerability underneath. Of course, the big difference between the two dramas is that Casanova is definitely for adults only, with some outrageous sex scenes along the way, even though most of these are short and played mainly for laughs, and it is suggested that a lot of it may be lies.

The central story follows Casanova from his lonely boyhood as the son of a poor actress to his successes and failures in the courts of Italy, France and England. He always ends up on the run again when he loses a gamble on love or money - accompanied by his valet, Rocco (Shaun Parkes), who is really his friend rather than his servant.  There are plenty of women glimpsed along the way, and a passionate fling with a singer who may or may not be a castrato – Bellino (Nina Sosanya). But Casanova’s true love, Henriette (Laura Fraser), is always eluding his grasp. She’s another pretender in society, who tells him she is his female counterpart – and, to complicate things further, she is engaged to his enemy, Grimani, played by top period drama actor Rupert Penry-Jones.  

Laura Fraser and David Tennant

This modern version of Casanova is a man who likes women as people rather than just seeing them as conquests, though there is still a long string of seductions, and, late in the story, this lifestyle has its tragic consequences when he sees that his son, Jack,  has grown up as a caricature of himself – and really is a heartless, immoral pleasure-seeker, with no secret soft centre.

The main story is set within a framing narrative, with Peter O’Toole playing the elderly Casanova, who is eking out a lonely existence as a librarian for a nobleman. All the people he knew in his heyday are dead, and he is scribbling down his memoirs in secret – until a new servant girl at the castle, Edith (Rose Byrne), the daughter of a wealthy family fallen on hard times, recognises his name from her father’s stories. She starts to ask him about his past, and the legend unfolds in flashback.

Rose Byrne as Edith

The story often cuts between the older and younger Casanova, with some shots moving from Tennant’s face to O’Toole’s – Tennant filmed this with blue contact lenses so that their eyes look the same. By the last episode, there is as much interest in the older Casanova as in the younger, and O’Toole has some powerful scenes. His role is much more than just a narrator. This flashback  construction gives a poignancy to the story, since we already know how it will end – and also casts a teasing doubt on some of the more outrageous episodes (many of which are apparently in the real Casanova’s memoirs!), since it could always be the older Casanova exaggerating to impress Edith, and posterity. All in all, I enjoyed this a lot more than I’d expected to – I rented the DVD but will now be buying it to watch again in the future.

Shaun Parkes and David Tennant

David Tennant and Rupert Penry-Jones

Andrew Buchan and Alun Armstrong in Garrow's Law, returning this autumn

Despite all the cutbacks to TV drama, there are some exciting period dramas still coming up – so I thought I’d do a little round-up of what is in store this autumn and winter.  Goodies coming up in the UK include ITV’s major drama Downton Abbey, which is scripted by Julian Fellowes of Gosford Park fame and set in a great country house in 1912 – the amazing cast is headed by Dame Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville. This series already has an unofficial fansite.

Also coming up on ITV1 is what I believe is the last drama written by great scriptwriter Alan Plater before his recent death, Joe Maddison’s War, a two-hour film which stars Kevin Whately as a shipyard worker in the Second World War. Sir Derek Jacobi and Melanie Hill are also in this one and it was reportedly filmed on location in Newcastle earlier this year, so hopefully will turn up during the new season.

Also due to be shown this autumn is the second series of the BBC’s 18th-century legal drama  Garrow’s Law , currently filming in Scotland – I’m a fan of this series, starring Andrew Buchan, Alun Armstrong and Lyndsey Marshal, so it is another one I’m really looking forward to.

The BBC is also currently filming an adaptation of Michel Faber’s bestselling novel The Crimson Petal and the White, set in 1870s London and focusing on a secret relationship between a businessman and a young prostitute – this is being filmed in Liverpool and it has been reported that the cast is headed by Richard E Grant and Gillian Anderson. It’s directed by Marc Munden who made Channel 4′s Civil War series The Devil’s Whore.

BBC2 has a one-off drama coming up this autumn called Christopher and His Kind, adapted from writer Christopher Isherwood’s memoir of the same name and looking at his life in Berlin in the early 1930s which inspired Cabaret - filming on this was done in May and June in Belfast. Matt Smith, the current star of Doctor Who, plays Isherwood, with Toby Jones and Lindsay Duncan also starring.

Lindsay Duncan is also among the cast for two-part BBC2 drama The Sinking of the Laconia, a wartime drama scripted by Alan Bleasdale about an armed British vessel sunk by a German U-boat – Andrew Buchan stars in this too, as well as Brian Cox. There are also dramas coming up on BBC2 about the making of Coronation Street (really strange that this one isn’t on ITV, which has been showing the series for 50 years!) and the early years of TV comedy legends Morecambe and Wise, with Victoria Wood cast as Morecambe’s mum.

I’m not sure whether you’d call this next one a costume drama or sci-fi – a cross between the two, I suppose! Mark Gatiss has adapted HG Wells’ classic The First Men in the Moon for BBC Four, and also stars as  Edwardian scientist Professor Cavor. BBC Four also has an adaptation by William Ivory of DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow and Women in Love coming up, melded together under the title The Sisters, starring Rosamund Pike and Rachael Stirling. Another classic being adapted for BBC Four is John Braine’s Room at the Top – I don’t know who is starring in this one.

I don’t think Channel 4 has announced its new season line-up yet but hopefully may have one or two period dramas in store too.