`BUCCANEERS': COMEDY OF MANORS
Times - Picayune
October 8, 1995
By Benjamin Morrison
Edith Wharton's "The Buccaneers" begins brilliantly.
The 5 1/2 -hour "Masterpiece
Theatre" miniseries, being run on three consecutive nights
(unusual) by
PBS, is a dazzling black comedy of manors, mixed with a comedy of
(social)
errors.
Somewhere along the way, though, it settles into more
conventional epic
soap operatics. It is still good, but much of the bite is gone.
(The novel was incomplete when the prolific American author
died in 1937.
A completed version has been published, with the final two-fifths
manuscript
based on the TV script by Maggie Wadey.)
Though it takes awhile for focus to form, one character and
her relationships
loom largest. She is a woman who marries young, only to discover
as time
passes that she has made a terrible mistake. She has wed a rather
ineffectual
member of the British nobility. She has a title and a future. The
husband's
mother has much power within the house and tries to exercise it
upon her
daughter-in-law. Divorce will be a scandal.
ANNUS HORRIBILIS, anyone?
The 90-minute opener concerns itself almost entirely with some
1870s American
boors who plan to use their daughters to better themselves
socially and
take a little of the NOUVEAU off their RICHE. The four young
women - virtually
girls, really - are at a Newport garden party as their parents
plan their
futures. Notes one of the children, lessons in "opera and
French verbs
are supposed to get a girl a good husband."
Hiring a British nanny is part of the plan. Says the woman
(Cherie Lunghi)
who gets the job, "The new people will do almost anything
for an experienced
English governess." Though she is there to teach p's and q's
to the young
women, she soon takes control of the family and the business-like
social
negotiations involved in their ambitions.
But the children make a mistake and trifle with the
pretensions of a Newport
doyenne. Their parents plans are dashed, if only geographically.
As one of the characters acknowledges, the young women are
"a new generation
of buccaneers" who will invade England. "By this time
next year, we shall
have all of London in our pockets."
The following two nights' narrative pays more attention to
courting than
to court intrigue. The women get involved in various OK-to-bad
marriages,
the worst being the best - Annabel's (Carla Gugino) wedding to
Julius,
Duke of Trevenick (James Frain). He has the highest title, and
she becomes
his duchess.
But theirs is the Chuck-and-Di disaster alluded to earlier. As
will be
obvious to viewers, Annabel's intended should have been the
down-at-heel
Guy Thwaite (the very handsome Greg Wise), who conveniently skips
the country,
virtually leaving her to Julius.
The plot unfolds and unfolds, involving a huge cast and -
perhaps inevitably
- lots of carriages. The sets are sumptuous (including a shot of
Castle
Howard of "Brideshead Revisited," introduced with a
dash of "Brideshead"
theme music), the costumes are sumptuous and the suffering is
sumptuous.
There's a happy ending for two central characters and something
more bittersweet
for another.
This is enjoyable entertainment, very handsomely cast and well
played.
The cast may be too big (and therefore confusing) for some
viewers, and
British politics from the end of the last century may seem
distant to others.
And what happened to the edge in episode one, that underlying
wit and wisdom?
It just got gobbled up in all those hours of narrative.
The BBC production is produced and directed by Philip Saville.
The cast
includes a spectrum of players, some seen for only moments, like
Elizabeth
Ashley as one girl's mother.
BUCCANEERS
*** 1/2
Sunday
9 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday
8 p.m.
