Reading the novel as i watched the DVD, it is obvious what Miss Evans wrote cannot be put on the screen without a lot of voice over. It is an extremely analytical, author description novel nearly 800 pages long. Like Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace,' you get a tableau of the best set pieces, with BBC costume drama values fully in evidence. A bit of a pity really, because the novel has its faults, mainly too little of the background of the changes of the time, eg Reform, the Railways (but the previous Eliot novel had been too full of such material, and it had failed at the box office!), and poorly underwritten male characters, eg Will, Fred, and Mr Bulstrode. The TV version does not address these shortcomings, and suffers accordingly. Rufus Sewell barely gets a part as he grimaces away - a lot of his little dialogue has been removed, especially his vitriolic rebuke near the end of Rosamund for flirting with him when Dorothea catches them in flagrante - a terrible sop to female, nay feminist, sympathies! But the main characters are richly drawn - Juliet Aubrey and Douglas Hodge, despite the odd looking into the middle distance to suggest about five pages of the novel's description, act extremely well.However, while Patrick Malahide is left to look rather silly because he seems to turn on his wife for little reason! Read the novel, enjoy the DVD, and see Rosamund get away with almost as much as Becky Sharp - the emptiness of British decorum - because of modern sensibilities! Let's hope the remake does not miss the chance to give the little vampiric minx her just lashing!
Review of Middlemarch
