Violins and potted palms

Press, 30 November 1978, Page 15

Violins and potted palms

It is escapist viewing at its best, and impeccably staged with that attention to detail evident in good British Television; but already, with the second episode of the six-part Thames Television series “Romance,” on Tuesday evening on TVI, we struck a dud. The self-contained plays are based on the works of well-known women novelists, with each one bringing us a little nearer the

present day. Last week, the first episode was “Moths,” written by Ouida and dramatised by Hugh Whitemore.

A uniformly excellent cast gave the slight plot substance, and the opening scenes in the turn-of-the-century French resort hotel were full of vigour.

Maria Aitken was the elegant and self-centred Lady Dolly, determined that her attractive young daughter Vere (Cathryn Harrison) would not upstage her. But it would not be Ouida if there wasn’t a hero around the corner.

In this story he was a smouldering Italian opera singer called Correze (Stuart Wilson) who called

Vere his “wild white rose,” took her out in a rowing-boat and serenaded her with Mozart arias. As Helen Paske said in. the “Listener” about such’ novels, when discussing the series: "You can meet men there that real life doesn’t provide.” It’s true. When did you last see anyone singing Mozart in a row-boat on the Avon? The "moths” of the title were the social parasites, gossiping maliciously amid

the potted palms and violin music. “They will eat your fine delicate fabric away,” Correze warns Vere.

The rest of the story was stormy and satisfying, with a forced marriage—- — Davenport made a splendidly villainous Prince Zouroff — a duel, and a rapprochement. With this week’s episode, Gerald Savory’s adaptation of the Elinor Glyn novel, “Three Weeks,” we were again in the potted palm and di-ning-room quartet belt. Pau! Verdayne, as played by Simon McCorkindale, was young, handsome, wealthy and terribly Eton and Oxford — “Not much of a one for art and

literature and all that rot,” he admitted. Sent off to Lake Lucerne by his managing ma to take his mind off the vicar’s pretty but unsuitable daughter, he was adroitly seduced by a Serbian princess, in a torrid scene on a tiger-skin. (I did say it was escapist.) Much of the cloying schmaltz of “Three Weeks” must be pinned on Elizabeth Shepherd’s overacting in her role as the princess. At her best there was a hint of Garboesque charm, at her worst she would not have made the grade in a deoderant commercial. (“My sweeeet darhling young Paaaul ...”) With the exception of the gypsy girl that Paul met in the woods, all the. other actors seemed to be under medium sedation.

Because of the high standard at the beginning, one cannot help hoping for better things in future episodes. The last one at least should be worth watching, it is Jilly Cooper’s story “Emily.” The over-all director of the series is Waris Hussein.

By

NANCY CAWLEY

POINTS OF VIEWING