Howards End radiated quality at every turn – review
The biggest surprise of BBC One’s new adaptation of EM Forster’s much loved Howards End was just how fresh, contemporary and relevant it felt despite the period costumes and elaborate formalities of its Edwardian setting.
Certainly, the decision to have the American writer Kenneth Lonergan (whose Manchester By the Sea won the Oscar for best original screenplay this year) adapt it paid off, as the clarity of his approach seemed unencumbered by preconceptions of Forster’s novel and his analysis of the tectonic shifts of British class and society.
The story opened with young, intellectual Helen Schlegel (Philippa Coulthard) writing gushingly to her sister Margaret (Hayley Atwell) from the sun-kissed environs of Howards End, country home of the Wilcox family, who had invited her to visit.
The thrusting, materialistic, nouveau riche Wilcoxes were like an exotic species to the cultured, idealistic Helen, who was instantly intoxicated by their difference. She might as well have been a “remoaner” seduced by a gang of devil-may-care Brexiteers. So when she announced by telegram that she had fallen in love with one of them, panic set in among the Shlegels and formidable Aunt Juley (Tracey Ullman dialling down her Angela Merkel) was dispatched to sort things out.
After this amusing set-up, the drama grew subtler. Though the engagement was broken off, the lives of the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes became ever more entangled when the Wilcoxes took an apartment near the Shlegels in London, and Margaret and Mrs Wilcox’s friendship deepened.
Hayley Atwell shone out as the well-intentioned if emotionally repressed Margaret. But she was matched by Matthew Macfadyen, bluffly charismatic as Wilcox paterfamilias Henry, and Julia Ormond exuding maternal poise as his wife.
Add to that a deliberate restraint in the production (not the standard period-drama lushness) that felt just right, and director Hettie Macdonald seemed hardly to put a foot wrong. Even so, one would hope the key character of insurance clerk Leonard Bast (Joseph Quinn) will get more rounded treatment as things progress.
Other than that quibble, this was a drama that radiated quality at every turn. From the outset there was a sense of vivid intelligence at work, a tangible impression that this is a piece in which ideas really matter. For now, though, the most obvious fun was in judging how little in some ways, and enormously in others, Britain has changed in the 100 years or so since Forster wrote his novel. The metropolitan elite still chatter away ineffectually; business folk still cut a swathe through much that is precious in pursuit of wealth. Together, somehow, we all limp on.
