Doctor Thorne
(ITV)
★★★☆☆
Thirteen
(BBC Two)
★★★★☆
The phrase “original drama”, the greatest plume in any channel’s cap, has had a specific meaning for ITV in recent years. Not for ITV, it boasted, adaptations of the classics, but bespoke, new stories. It was a noble ambition and paid off handsomely with Downton Abbey — although originality is a relative concept, and it is hard to imagine Downton without Upstairs, Downstairs, or Upstairs, Downstairs without the novels of Anthony Trollope.
Which brings us a little too neatly (for the only servants that interested Trollope were civil servants) to last night’s Doctor Thorne, which Downton’s creator, Julian Fellowes, much wanted to make — and who was ITV to refuse him? “Written by Julian Fellowes,” the titles told us, pausing before adding, as if swallowing some pride: “Adapted from the novel by Anthony Trollope.” What are rules for, if not to be broken?
So there we were, firmly in the 19th century and classic serial territory. When Thorne exclaimed to his niece, “You care about bonnets!” Mary replied firmly: “Why shouldn’t I?” For, she might have added, nothing is beyond the modern ITV viewer. (The only other meta-textual note was struck by the poisonous aristo, Lady Arabella, who, referring to the parish’s last vicar, noted: “I never felt poor Trump was quite up to the mark.”)
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The snobbery, the greed, the secrets withheld and fortunes randomly bestowed were familiar clay in Fellowes’s hands. The dramatis personae had been cast from the usual pool: Tom Hollander (Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice) as Thorne, Rebecca Front (War and Peace) as Lady Arabella and Richard McCabe (Indian Summers) as her insolvent husband. The only daring was in hiring Ian McShane as the murderer-done-good Sir Roger Scatcherd. McShane took this as an opportunity to reprise his Al Swearengen from the cruelly cancelled Deadwood. The scenes between him and Hollander had a Prospero-Caliban vibe to them.
Yet there was something uncomfortable about almost all of it, like discovering a favourite uncle sporting a top hat. Everyone was doing perfectly well what one felt they had done better before. Only the interactions between the young swain Frank, played by the ridiculously handsome Harry Richardson, and the doctor’s niece Mary (Stefanie Martini) emitted real snap, crackle and pop. The result was that this no doubt faithful translation, with its yawning swards and crenelated towers, felt more pastiche than Downton itself.
From unoriginal drama to original. Thirteen, which you may have already caught online on BBC Three (the site’s first figures are good), is by Marnie Dickens, who is 30, and about a woman not much younger than her. Ivy Moxam has just escaped from 13 years’ captivity and is slowly discovering
how much has changed at home.
As sharp as the dialogue — it is touching and worrying when she asks her sister to “do” her make-up — is the central performance by Jodie Comer (Doctor Foster’s husband’s mistress). Ivy’s lips are chapped but the lies that pass through them are smooth. Disappearing children, yes. A found child who has grown to maturity with a pervert in loco parentis — that feels new and dangerous. Part two of five is on BBC Three now.
andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk