The Way We Live Now

Back in the autumn of 2001, this was the big BBC costume drama, and for reasons I don’t quite recall now, I missed it. It’s been on a couple of times since on UK Drama, and I missed it both times, so I resolved not to do so again. Saturday night saw episodes one and two, and despite not being sure if it was going to be one of those series that you end up committing to video rather than watching, I got hooked. Great performances all round, and I now plan to read the novel, which I picked up in a cheap Wordsworth Classics edition earlier this year.
I don’t think that I’ve read any Trollope, so this seems like a good start. The best I’ve managed previously is one of the repeat showings in the late eighties of the Barchester Chronicles starring the fabulous Alan Rickman as the Reverand Obadiah Slope, as well as excellent performances from Nigel Hawthorne, Donalds Pleasance and Geraldine McEwan.
The BBC are filming another Trollope, also being adapted by the all-powerful Andrew Davies – He Knew He Was Right.
Incidentally, UK Drama really came up trumps this weekend, with a repeat showing of Between The Lines. Having sat through The Way We Live Now with advert breaks, I ended up digging out my old VHS recordings of Between the Lines, and watched the first couple of episodes at a slightly faster rate without the ad breaks.


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