Press Archive

Hollywood Reporter
05 Feb 2004
By Laurence Vittes

TV Review: the Forsyte Saga, Series II

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The second installment in Masterpiece Theater’s updating of “The Forsyte Saga” for the 21st century (who knows for what generations) is more like soft porn than a dramatic venture with even the slightest pretensions toward translating fine literature into elevated cultural fare.

On the other hand, it’s so beautifully directed and photographed, as if it were a series of pastel tableaux intended for display in a museum, that most viewers will probably just be swept along by the manipulative story line and the rush of superficial emotion. Anyway, it’s not as if John Galsworthy’s minor though refined talent was unworthy of such treatment, or that the people he wrote about have much relevance to our time beyond creating a pretext for visual poetry.

Fortunately, Damian Lewis (news) insists on taking a great risk by making Soames Forsyte, the central figure of all the soap opera’s twists and turns, into such an extremely static and unengaging fellow that he injects a needed sense of stature into the otherwise shallow proceedings. In fact, his work enables the acting of those around him to seem of greater quality, in particular Emma Griffiths Malin and Lee Williams as the quicksilver lovers whose destiny he tries to foil. In this regard, he is ably seconded by the chiseled beauty Gina McKee, who, as his first wife, performs an equally masterful job of capturing with great intensity an unlovable, unmovable force.

Inevitably in such ritualized fare, it is the peripheral figures who bring the story alive, the best of whom are Beatriz Batarda and Amanda Root as the other women in Soames’ life, and Michael Maloney as a continental adventurer who (with a French accent so bad it is amusing) goes around conveniently unraveling loose ends.

Russell Baker again does the honors as Masterpiece Theater’s urbane though increasingly marmoreal host. But then energy is not exactly what “The Forsyte Saga” specializes in. As the first two hours show (the series will continue for another three hours on successive Sunday nights), this is viewing for those who find the dogged pace at which the English self-destruct on public television irresistible.

Cast: Soames Forsyte: Damian Lewis; Fleur: Emma Griffiths Malin; Young Jolyon: Rupert Graves (news); Jon: Lee Williams; Irene Forsyte: Gina McKee; Annette: Beatriz Batarda; Winifred: Amanda Root; Prosper Profond: Michael Maloney; Montague Dartie: Ben Miles; Michael Mont: Oliver Milburn (news); June: Gillian Kearney; Holly: Amanda Ryan.