A Dance to the Music of Time

At long last, Anthony Powell's 12 volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time has been dramatised for television. If Powell's "Journals" are to be believed, this is after any number of false starts spanning the best part of 20 years. The dramatisation was in four two-hour episodes, each covering approximately 3 books. They were shown on UK's Channel 4 TV in October 1997. The format of four 2-hour films was, in many ways, unfortunate as it severely constrained the amount of the action which could be shown, however given the exigencies of modern TV scheduling it was probably the only way in which "Dance" was ever going to get televised. As a devotee of the books, I was apprehensive about how they would translate into film. Just how do you condense 12 novels into 8 hours of television? However in my view the dramatisation worked extremely well, notwithstanding the necessary omissions. What helped the whole production was some interesting, and at times inspired and doubtless extravagant, casting which included: Edward Fox (as Uncle Giles), Zoë Wanamaker (as Audrey Maclintick), John Gielgud (as St John Clarke), Alan Bennett (as Sillery), Miranda Richardson (as Pamela Flitton)... some interesting choices!! Overall an interesting and enjoyable series. I just fear that having been done once that we'll never see "Dance" recreated in a different (better?) format and that Powell will remain relatively unknown in comparison with contemporaries like Evelyn Waugh ... which is in my view quite unjustifiable as Powell is a much better writer. Fortunately Channel 4 released these 4 films on video - which is excellent as they're well worth watching again.

They don't make adaptations like this any more - no doubt for cost reasons and a lack of imagination and bravery at the TV companies. 7 hours of solid drama, yet full of incidental humour and some very fine characterisations.

Unfortunately it is flawed, and the flaws make it just very good viewing rather than the excellent series it should have been. The biggest flaws to my mind are:

1 The decision to replace Nick and his wife by new actors for Film 4 was totally wrong. Nick ages far too much in too short a space of time, and looks completely different. This creates a real problem of believability.

2 Still on ageing, some of the actors are 'aged' very well, whilst others (especially the ladies and Odo) seem hardly any different as the decades progress.

3 Film 4 is by far the weakest, though to be fair this reflects the books on which it is based. Perhaps it should have been cut further and the earlier years given even greater prominence.

4 Despite a great deal of pruning, there are still too many characters and insufficient narration for non-aficionados of the books to be sure all the time of who is who.

5 The scenes often seem to be a succession of dramatic deaths - difficult to avoid with the way the story has to be condensed, but very predictable nonetheless.

However, it's still pretty good, and light years removed from much of the dumbed-down drama on TV today.

No, I haven't read the books, but I have read Proust, and you can bet Mr. Powell read him too. Powell's first volume appeared thirty years after Proust's death, and a greater valentine can't be imagined.

Both "Dance" and "In Search of Lost Time" are panoramic multi-generational quasi-autobiographical narratives of the gentry they knew. Lower class types pop in from time to time, but they never take center stage for long. Both genteel epics run more than 3000 pages. Major characters are rarely single portraits, but are usually drawn from composites of two or three prototypes. Both works chronicle the human cycles of birth, education, coupling, re-coupling, decay and death.

In addition to writing earlier, Proust had the structural advantage of writing the beginning and end of his novel first, spending the rest of his life filling in the middle. It was a meditation on the nature of memory, and underlying all the gossip and melodrama is an awareness that there is a coherent thesis and philosophy tying the whole journey together.

At least as presented here, no such unifying ideas are discernible in Powell. We meet characters of greater or lesser interest, they do the things that people do (and sometimes don't do, and occasionally never have done in the history of the world). They learn, age, crack-up and die, but the whole thing just kind of trails off and rumbles to a stop rather than ends. We may have a good time getting there, but I wind up wondering why we made the trip.

In response to criticisms of the abridgment, we should note that Powell, as a former screenwriter, was not upset at the reshaping of his work for TV. Nicholas Coleridge reports: "Powell, himself, says that 'Somewhat to my surprise' he is happy with the adaptation. 'It seems quite alright to me,' he told me with faltering voice, on the telephone. 'I think they've done it as well as this medium possibly can.'"

Across the board, the actors are almost uniformly pleasing. Simon Russell Beale has been rightly cheered for his remarkable and daring Widmerpool, but Michael Williams (Judi Dench's late husband) is outstanding as Ted Jeavons, and Edward Fox steals every scene he's in, no surprise there. James Purefoy as Nick has to do a lot of listening, and occasionally he does it wonderfully well.

I was not upset at the recasting of half a dozen characters in the fourth film. Some of the young actors looked quite silly in extreme age makeup as practiced 10 years ago. I'd have been happier if it had been more widespread. It took me about 8 seconds to register that Nick and Isabel and Jean were played by different actors, and then I plunged right back into the story. I'm sorry for the viewers that were derailed by the substitutions, but I wasn't.

I am perplexed by the character of Pamela Flitton as played here in her unique patented performance by Miranda Richardson. She is a vicious, irritable, impatient, destructive, sexually voracious, uncontrolled and uncontrollable woman, everything that panics an English writer from Charles Dickens to Bram Stoker and onward.

Pamela is a crimson-lipped vampire straight out of Hammer Horror, and not one thing she does or says has a motivation. I hope the books are more coherent in explaining why, why anything.

BTW, the film "A Business Affair," from novels by Barbara Skelton, gives Pamela's prototype's side of the story, and I look forward to seeing it by way of further illumination. There's precious little to comprehend on view here. She just is.

Anyway, this is all professionally done and makes for entertaining viewing. It may not be the absolute best of its genre, but it's a long way from the worst. It is highly recommended to people who like British miniseries based on long novels.

OTOH, no one has ever made a good movie out of Proust, they're all terrible. There's a wonderful published screenplay Harold Pinter wrote for Joseph Losey, but it was never produced. If you want to spend a year reading 3000 pages, please start first with Proust, then take on Powell for dessert.

This television adaptation, by Hugh Whitmore, of Anthony Powell's twelve-volume book condenses all the action of five decades, and over a hundred characters, into eight hours. We first meet the main characters – Nick Jenkins, our constant narrator; Kenneth Widmerpool; Charles Stringham; and Peter Templar – when they are at school together. Through the years we watch them move through their tangled lives, which end in tragedy for some, happiness for others.

Making an impact within the cast are James Purefoy as Nick Jenkins (playing him from university to the end of World War II); Jonathan Cake as Peter Templar; Claire Skinner as Jean Duport; Grant Thatcher as Mark Members; James Fleet as Hugh Moreland; Zoë Wanamaker as Audrey MacLintock; John Gielgud as St John Clarke; Miranda Richardson as Pamela Fritton; David Yelland as Jenkins' father; Edward Fox as Uncle Giles; and Michael Williams as Ted Jeavons.

But – the best performance within this series by a mile is from the wonderful Simon Russell-Beale, managing to turn the truly horrible Widmerpool into a rounded character who is totally convincing, whether as a figure of fun at school, as a pompous major in the war, as a humiliated husband, or as a free spirit dancing.

One little quibble would be – why did they suddenly change the casting for Nick Jenkins and no other main character in the final episode? J C Quiggin, Odo Stephens, Mark Members, Widmerpool and others remain the same actors made up to look older. Jean and Isabel (Mrs Jenkins) are also recast but this isn't as noticeable. So, after two and a half episodes getting used to James Purefoy as Nick we suddenly have to adapt to John Standing. He's effective, but I think this change was a mistake.

So, is this adaptation any good? It is true that sometimes you lose track of who's who (who they were related to, who they married, where they met) but there are numerous scenes of interest – not all directly witnessed by Nick. The musical soundtrack is superb and well-chosen. Having eight hours to tell the story means that things don't have to progress at a breakneck pace, and if some aspects come off better than others, nothing really fails. ‘Dance to the Music of Time' is an engrossing and superior piece of TV drama.

A 1997 BBC adaptation of the seemingly endless cycle of novels by Anthony Powell. Essentially it is about a group of privileged, upper middle class literary types, who manage to coast through life without seeming to do very much at all, with a couple of notable exceptions. Despite this, it's totally compelling, particularly the episode that is set in World War Two.

Anthony Powell was well placed in the literary and party scene of the 1930s, and many of the characters are based on people he knew during his life and career, literary and military. The Anthony Powell Society has a fascinating page detailing the real life inspirations for many of his characters.

A degree of tolerance, along with a suspension of disbelief, is required to enjoy the final instalment, although it actually improves after the first viewing. The principal character Nick Jenkins (based on Powell himself) had hitherto been played by James Purefoy, but Jenkins was recast with John Standing for the final episode. This could be a little disconcerting at first, particularly as James Purefoy had created such a likeable character, and had anchored the narrative of the first three episodes. Some of the other essential characters - ones that weren't recast - tended to age at their own rate, regardless of the timeline. JG Quiggin (Adrian Scarborough) and Kenneth Widmerpool (Simon Russell Beale) seemed to age about half century in the decade or so after the war, whereas Pamela Flitton (Miranda Richardson) barely developed a grey hair. The makeup, now far more obvious with HD television, was not good at all, particularly on the standout character, Widmerpool, otherwise played superbly all the way through by Simon Russell Beale.

Despite these flaws in the final episode, this remains one of my favourite dramas of all time, largely because the actors bring the characters to life so beautifully.