Howards End,
ABC Iview
Remember the old Sunday nights on the ABC when a BBC costume drama was the go-to programming? Well over the past few weeks Aunty has gone back to the future with the latest incarnation of Howards End.
The new version (there was a critically acclaimed movie in the ’90s from Merchant, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter) of what is considered to be E.M Forster’s masterpiece novel of life and classes in the Edwardian era is directed by BAFTA winner Hettie Macdonald and adapted by Academy Award winning screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan.
It should be good with credentials like that, but it isn’t -with bonnets, heaving bosoms and carriage rides (Downton Abbey addicts need not apply).
This is a really lovely portrait of two independent and unconventional sisters and the men in their lives who are pretty much looking for meaning and love in a rapidly changing world.
But it also looks at a society divided by class. Hayley Atwell (Captain America) stars as Margaret Schlegel who is courted by the older Henry Wilcox (Mr Darcy himself, Matthew Macfadyen).
Wilcox is a self-made conservative businessman – a grandfather and though Macfadyen arguable steals the show, he some how seems too young and too close in age to Atwell to really be the older man.
The other stand-out is Philippa Coulthard as Margaret’s passionate free-spirited younger sister Helen who takes up the cause of Leonard Bast (Joseph Quinn) a young bank clerk fallen on hard times at work and home.
Of course one suitor is available and rich and the other is neither, setting up a bit of a collision course between worlds. Witty and serious (despite the casting of several comic actors including Tracey Ullman as the girl’s aunt) and slowly-paced this Howards End Is nevertheless rewarding and thought-provoking television and a story still relevant today.
– Tania Phillips
