Trollope and TV

We’ve spent a lot of time reading Trollope’s series of political novels, six of them all told, although I rather resorted to speed reading for the last two, which were weaker, in my opinion. I enjoyed many of the characters and particularly enjoyed the many different versions of courtship and marriage which Trollope describes.  It really does bring home to you that women were totally in men’s power – even rich ones had little independence, thanks to the pressures of society, and were at terrible risk of being married to bad men who were only interested in their money.

There’s every sort of marriage described – arranged marriages which turn out well, or turn out badly, marriages for love which turn sour, marriages for money and status which turn even more sour – and heavens, do the women who make a bad choice suffer! And to be fair, so do a few of the men.

I had a vague memory of these books being serialised for the BBC as “The Pallisers”, so I looked it up on Amazon, and found that yes, it was available but at a ridiculous price. Anyway, Phil found the whole set of four boxes of DVDs in the library, so we borrowed the first set and started watching. It’s been quite a task as there are, as I said, 4 boxes and 26 hour long episodes. As they are lent for only a week, we’ve had to maintain productivity – one day we had to watch an episode while we ate our lunch!

It was on TV in 1974, when we didn’t actually own a set, and it is filmed at a length and breadth of detail that I am sure could never be repeated nowadays. The books were adapted by Simon Raven, who has made the most of Trollope’s witticisms and added plenty of his own. And the costumes are just magnificent, and as far as I can see, strictly accurate. Again, I don’t think it could ever be repeated nowadays.  They’d never dare to put modern actresses in those desperately ugly hair styles and headgear that they wore in the earlier part of Victoria’s reign. They even have the courage to put quite big little boys in frocks, and some of the men have the sort of facial hair in which you expect to see the odd nest.

Another enjoyment has been spotting actors and actresses, once well known, and wondering if they are still alive. Wikipedia has taken a pounding. “Oh look it’s him / her!”  we exclaim, and then try to remember their name and what else they were in.  It’s kept us happily occupied for hours and hours.

I’ll have to see what other treasures the library possesses. “Poldark”, do you think?