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| TV,
Justin Harries,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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For an aspiring television director with the loftiest of ideals, adapting Mervyn Peake's novel Gormenghast in to a TV series is perhaps the most precarious of tasks. Written in '50s, Peake's novel is a labyrinthine plot of hysterical lunatics, arcane rituals and degenerate bloodlines, with so much double-crossing amongst the characters that it puts the average episode of Dallas to shame. Taking place in the crumbling edifice that is Gormenghast, the book is in essence a gloomy meditation on the state of English atrophy, one that effectively revels in the grandiose tone and imagery that fantasy fiction can offer, but without the Orcs and women in chain mail bikinis. I can’t imagine the geeks at Games Workshop spending their Saturdays battling over this one.
The main problem our plucky director has is the fact the novel is so literary. When faced with a visual interpretation of an ‘unfilmable’ source one first asks the question; why bother? Well, our persevering director has an answer. An acclaimed triumph of the written word, Gormengast is splendidly excessive in its description of the filth and squalor in a disintegrating city-state. Get the right production designer and you can’t fail (he may also snag a BAFTA for you). Also, with the respect that Peakes work garners, it may be possible to temp a few high fluting thespians to your cause – imagine the talent! Make out your labour of love as a watermark of British telly, one that only the unique way the public pays its licence fee could allow, and we have a entity designed to get a programmers siliva glands online – Event Television. By now our producer is looking at a sure shot. Goodness – it may even have a special supplement of the Radio Times devoted to it!
And so, with a fanfare, the Gormengast circus comes to town, precariously balanced between two stools that represent the sublime and the downright annoying. Our director is Alan Wilson and he’s done a pretty good job, Christopher Hobbs designs are excellent, but however are saddled with the prennial BBC curse that is overlighting. Thus Swelters kitchens are not as dank as they ought to be, and the Groans opulent arifacts are rendered a trifle tacky at times. The most notable successes are those claimed by the cast. To be able to pull off such panto theatrics in so solemn a world must have been super tricky. Some come of better than others – Ian Richardson, Christopher Lee and the always excellent June Brown strike the right balance whilst Warren Mitchell and Richard Griffiths sink under the bombast.
As for what the dear British public will make of this, I do not know. I feel the subversive elements may be too buried amongst the visuals, and the complex character relationships so convoluted that by episode four you may be adrift or uncaring.
Gormengast on TV was always going to be this way, but one thing is sure, one that our director would have had in mind from the beginning: its very existence is its greatest triumph.
ITV Tues/Weds 20.00 GMT
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