Television Roger Lewis
If illegitimacy terrified the Victorians, it wasn’t because of the sexual impropriety, as such; it was because of the implications for inheritance law, the disposal of property, rights of possession and ownership. (I always suspected The Turn of the Screw is mostly about illegitimacy rather than sexual abuse.) For this reason, the ending of Howards
End has always struck me as sentimental, wishful thinking – Helen’s baby, born out of wedlock, due one day to succeed to the eponymous, gabled manor house, situated somewhere leafy in Surrey. Was this E M Forster’s vision of socialism and the redistribution of wealth?
The final episode of the four-part adaptation had a lot of plot to get through: the discovery of Henry’s Cypriot mistress (‘You must understand the temptations that lie around a man’); Tibby walking the streets trying to hand over a £5,000 cheque; Helen, pregnant, hiding in Munich; Tracey Ullman, impersonating Miriam Margolyes, expiring in Swanage; Leonard Bast being killed by a collapsing bookcase, having been beaten about the head with a broadsword; and then the woolly ending and the cast walking through an idyllic meadow while distant thunder sounded, ie the Edwardian world was about to end in the storm of the First World War.
I loved it. I thought it perfection, particularly Nico Muhly’s violin music, which was slightly discordant and modern. I couldn’t get enough of the beautiful London squares, the feathery wrought-ironwork, the carriages and motor cars, the peach and turquoise wallpaper of the interiors, the bowls of flowers, the ivory dresses and Helen’s red beret.
Normally, I can resist period costume dramas. They are stiff physically and psychologically. But, thanks to the easy expertise and precision of Matthew Macfadyen (Henry) and Hayley Atwell (Margaret), the human interplay of the Wilcox clan (practical, philistine, mercenary, unemotional, concealing themselves behind ‘a wall of newspapers and golf clubs’) with the Schlegel siblings (independently wealthy, keen on good works, high-minded and in danger of being priggish) was electric and alive, full of layers and clashes and mutual fascination. It was clear that Henry and Margaret are drawn to each other, and infinitely forgiving, because they are amused by each other. Joseph Quinn as Leonard Bast was pale and mournful and poetically dignified. Alex Lawther played Tibby as Stan Laurel.
The documentary Joe Orton Laid Bare made me feel sorry for Kenneth Halliwell, the wife-figure whom Orton had outgrown. Halliwell was described as ‘a big, bloated spider’ and ‘a middle-aged nonentity’. Another eye-witness vouchsafed, ‘He was, to put it mildly, loathsome.’ Such was his pent-up jealousy, suspicion and anger, Halliwell very understandably picked up that hammer in 1967 and let his lover have it. ‘There was blood all over the ceiling,’ said Peggy Ramsay, Orton’s agent, who, requested by the police to identify the bodies at the murder scene, purloined Orton’s diaries, which were later edited and published by John Lahr. Lahr, no oil painting himself, told us that Orton was ‘quintessentially of the moment’, ie a cocky icon of the Sixties, known for his seductive charm and permissiveness.
On the evidence of the extracts from his plays, however, which were performed by Antony Sher, Ben Miles and Freddie Fox, what Orton’s work now mostly seemed was very dated. The farcical treatment of funerals, false teeth, coffins, psychiatrists and strippers was less funny than any standard sitcom variant by Galton and Simpson.
The business about underworld figures, intruders, robbers and ruffians – it was like Harold Pinter for gays. Freddie Fox as Mr Sloane (‘Do you wear leather, next to the skin?’) would have made Orton dizzy with lust and Halliwell redouble his efforts with the claw hammer.
The original Mr Sloane, Dudley Sutton, now resembles Dame Iris Murdoch. But then nobody looks as they used to look, except Nicholas Parsons.
Landlocked in Smethwick, when she was a child, Dame Julie Walters dreamt of running away to sea and becoming a smuggler. Instead, she has made a cheerful series, Coastal Railways With Julie Walters, where, in Mrs Overall mode, she rides on the footplate and banters with members of the public.
It must be hard to make a journey around the British Isles and not bump into celebrities. Timothy West and Prunella Scales are on the canals; antique shops are crammed with the likes of Nigel Havers and Derek Fowlds rooting for bargains; but at least the chances of falling over Rolf at the vet’s have been reduced.