Middlemarch brave une traversée de l'Atlantique...

"Middlemarch Braves Atlantic Crossing"
Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times, 28 mars 1994

It salvaged the BBC's reputation for costume drama, converted unknown actors into stars and lofted George Eliot onto the best-seller list for the first time in more than a hundred years.

This winter, "Middlemarch" -- the mini-series -- mesmerized millions of viewers here, setting off a mini-craze for Victorian fiction. In its wake there were "Middlemarch" lectures, "Middlemarch" comics, even a wave of "Middlemarch" debates. Authors and columnists argued in the London papers over whether Dorothea would, in fact, live happily ever after, whether Casaubon, if left alone, would have finished his great work and finally whether Will Ladislaw entered his marriage bed a virgin.

Measured by its reception here, "Middlemarch," a co-production of the BBC and WGBH of Boston, was a triumph of near "Forsyte Saga" proportion. On April 10 the six-part series begins its stateside run on PBS's "Masterpiece Theater." And while few believe it will produce the same commotion in America, its backers say they are confident "Middlemarch's" appeal can survive the trans-Atlantic trip.

"Often patterns are similar in the two countries," said Rebecca Eaton, the executive producer of "Masterpiece Theater." "And we're hoping the same thing will happen in the States, that people will get into it as a good narrative, a good story."

With Bated Breath
In its day, "Middlemarch," which was published in installments in 1871, was perhaps the literary equivalent of a mini-series; thousands of readers awaited the appearance every other month of a new episode in Blackwood's Magazine. And in spite of its delicate Victorian sensibility, the novel does managed to pack in many essential elements of an absorbing television drama. It has a beautiful and idealistic heroine, Dorothea, who marries a repressive old cleric, Casaubon, then later finds comfort with his much younger and handsomer cousin, Will. It has a shop-till-you-drop wife, Rosamond, whose bills destroy the reformist aspirations of her husband, Lydgate. It even has a juicy blackmail plot.

What it lacks, however, is the warm rustle of undergarments.

The novel was adapted for television by Andrew Davies, who also wrote the screenplays for the popular "Masterpiece Theater" series "House of Cards" and "To Play the King." In most respects Mr. Davies was remarkably faithful to the book, even drawing some of the dialogue directly from its pages. But the series' bodice-busting scenes, featuring Rosamond and Lydgate in various stages of passion, are purely his own invention.

Mr. Davies has described these scenes as enhancements of, rather than additions to, the original text. In a newspaper column a few months ago, he wrote that it was the ghost of Eliot herself who "pestered" him to explore the intimacies shared by the book's young couples. She whispered in his ear that "she was very interested in sex as a motivating power, and that had she lived at the end of the 20th century instead of the middle of the 19th, she would have seized the chance of dealing with it more directly."

A Hunger for More
As it turns out, Mr. Davies was not the only one haunted by the spirit of Eliot, who seems to have hovered around "Middlemarch" much like the town gossip, Mrs. Cadwallader. The series producer, Louis Marks, and its director, Anthony Page, were so concerned about doing justice to Eliot that after Mr. Davies handed in the screenplay, they spent almost four months going over it, trying to figure out how to cram in more scenes from the book. "We sat around saying: 'How can we possibly get this in? How can we get that in?' " Mr. Marks recalled. Eventually, they decided to add a half hour to the first episode, bringing it to 90 minutes. But even that was not enough to satisfy some.

"During filming, the actors kept bringing in lines from the book they wanted to put back in," Mr. Page said. "To be honest, the book became a little bit of a menace."

Producing a six-part mini-series is trying under the best of circumstances; producing one that is true to another century is a particularly labor-intensive task. The first challenge was finding a town that had maintained its 1830's architecture. (Although it was printed in 1871, "Middlemarch" is set 40 years earlier.) After combing the country, 19th-century prints in hand, the production team lighted on Stamford, a town in Lincolnshire, then spent weeks repainting the houses, hiding the telephone lines and covering the paved roads with dirt. Since the filming, tourism to the town has more than tripled.

A Star's Illness
One casualty of "Middlemarch's" quest for historical accuracy was its star, Juliet Aubrey, who played Dorothea. Last June, wearing a heavy cape to film a winter scene, Ms. Aubrey passed out and was unconscious for more than a day. She did not return to work for more than a month, throwing the entire filming schedule into chaos.

At a cost of roughly $:1 million ($1.5 million) per episode "Middlemarch" is the most expensive series the BBC has ever made. The series represented an enormous gamble for the British broadcaster, especially since so many of its most recent forays into period drama have ended in frightful routs. Last fall, for example, one television critic assessed the BBC's adaptation of Stendhal's "Rouge et le Noir" as follows: "To say the whole production was a lead balloon is to do a great disservice both to lead and to balloons."

That this gamble paid off so handsomely seems to have surprised even some of "Middlemarch's" most ardent supporters. "I knew it was good," said Michael Jackson, controller of BBC2, which paid most of costs of the production. "But I didn't know it was going to be a great big hit." On the strength of "Middlemarch's" reception, the BBC has placed several other period dramas into production, including adaptations of Dickens's "Martin Chuzzlewit" and Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

Neither the BBC nor WGBH will say how much money the American station put up for "Middlemarch," though both say it was a significant sum. Indeed, Ms. Eaton of WGBH, who counts the novel as one of her favorites, was instrumental in convincing the BBC to undertake the project.

Metaphor for Today
Some have tried to explain the series' appeal to British viewers by stressing its luscious scenery and pretty stars. Certainly Ms. Aubrey delivers a sympathetic, almost Audrey Hepburnesque performance. Another school points rather to "Middlemarch's" bleakness, its message of idealism subverted by everyday life. "We've seen so many idealistic schemes cut away in the last years, so many things being privatized for a profit that the story has great contemporary relevance for England," Mr. Page said.

Americans are a less dependable audience for scenery, history and certainly for bleakness. And so PBS is at once enthusiastic and measured. In light of the series' triumph in England they are increasing promotion. As part of the promotion, next Monday there will be a screening at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and a panel discussion, with Brooke Astor, Erica Jong and Sister Souljah among the panelists.

"The publicity approach," Ms. Eaton said, "is to have people not be afraid of 'Middlemarch.' "

Elizabeth Kolbert
New York Times, 28 mars 1994