What Becomes a 'Masterpiece' Most?
The Los Angeles Times
October 8, 1995

SUSAN KING
The longest-running drama series on television began in 1971 with the lavish
costume epic "The First Churchills," starring John Neville and Susan Hampshire.

Over the years, PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre," which has been solely supported
by the Mobil Corp., has presented such gems as "The Jewel in the Crown,"
"Upstairs, Downstairs," "I, Claudius" and "Poldark." Of course, not every
series has been a "masterpiece"; remember the campy Daniel Day-Lewis-less
"The Last of the Mohicans"?

"Masterpiece Theatre" kicks off its 25th season Sunday with the ambitious
"The Buccaneers." The five-and-a-half hour miniseries, which airs on an
unprecedented three consecutive nights, is based on the unfinished 1938
work of Edith Wharton's--America's landmark novelist of manners. The sweeping,
tragic story follows the adventures of a group of spirited American girls
who are ostracized by 1870s New York society because they are deemed too
nouveau riche . They "invade" the aristocratic circles of England in hopes
of landing both social respect and titled husbands. Though they get what
they want, they give up much more in the bargain.

"I suppose in life there is this quid pro quo, " explains director-producer
Philip Saville ("Family Pictures"). "You get {what you want}, but you have
to give something. People don't understand that you have to give something.
For me one of the most telling moments in the piece is when the girl Virginia
{Alison Elliott} gets married and she realizes that he {an impoverished
titled aristocrat} married her for her money. He says to her, 'I think
it was a fair exchange. What's your problem?' I suppose she was wanting
more--a great spiritual love."

"The Buccaneers" was adapted by Maggie Wadey, who provided an ending to
the story left incomplete when Wharton ("The Age of Innocence") died in
1937. The lavish production was shot in Newport, R.I., and in such grand
ancestral British homes as Castle Howard (of "Brideshead Revisited" fame),
Burghley House, Grimsthorpe Castle and Stanway House.

The large British and American cast features Carla Gugino ("Miami Rhapsody"),
Mira Sorvino ("Quiz Show"), Cherie Lunghi ("Kean"), Jenny Agutter ("The
Snow Goose"), Connie Booth ("Fawlty Towers"), Michael Kitchen ("To Play
the King"), Alison Elliott ("The Underneath") and Greg Wise (the upcoming
"Sense and Sensibility").

"I'm a Wharton fan," Seville offers. "I'd like to do a film about her.
What's interesting is there are two kinds of people: those who express
and those who have dreams but don't have the ability to express. She's
the latter. She expressed it very beautifully in writing. She wrote about
a bygone age."

Unlike the era of "The Buccaneers," the English can "be who we want to
be," says Greg Wise, who plays Guy Thwaite, the young man in love with
the unhappily married Nan St. George (Gugino). "The strata of society you
were born into, that is where you stayed. You couldn't get a job. Even
in the upper strata, gentlemen didn't work. You had to keep the house going
so you ended up selling all of your {art} work.

Wise, though, was surprised the aristocracy still must spend the majority
of its members' time supporting their lavish homes. These days, most families
live in a small wing of the estate. Money is earned by opening the homes
to tourists and renting the estates out to film crews. "For the first time
at Burghley, I really got to see that these people's lives and energies
are directed at purely keeping the house dry and warm," Wise says.

"These people in the 1990s spend all their time and energies making money
so they can put a new roof on the west wing. ... Things haven't changed.
That's what they are born into," he adds.

Gugino, the youngest "Buccaneer," recalls having the same experience at
Castle Howard. "The Howards would come and visit us," she says. "They also
live in a very small wing of the house. It's a museum for most of the people
who come through. It was shocking to me. ... We all know that material
things never really give you happiness, but you still have some illusion
that if you live in this castle with lakes and mountains ..."

Saville says the miniseries took very few liberties with Wharton's novel.
"The only thing we did was introduce, which was apparent at the time, but
she couldn't write about it because she couldn't get it published, was
the homosexuality" of Nan's husband, Julius Folyat, the Duke of Trevenick
(played by James Frain).

When the miniseries aired with much success earlier this year in England,
Saville says, "some of the more scholarly members of the press took umbrage"
with the decision to out Julius. "There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing
in the press. We kept on saying she couldn't write this {back in the '30s}.
It was like E.M. Forster and that novel 'Maurice.' It was years and years
{before it was published}."

The British press, Saville says, also charged the director was perpetuating
"the female breast" because almost every dress in the production has a
plunging neckline. "I was surprised," Saville says. "I kept on saying,
'That's not true,' " noting that female ancestors depicted in paintings
in the houses he visited had extremely ample decolletage.

"It was exactly like watching 'Baywatch,' " he quips.

"The Buccaneers" airs Sunday-Tuesday at 9 p.m. on KCET.