by Adam Ferenz
Based on a series of novels by Paul Scott, this series examines life at the end of the British Raj, in aching detail. Peggy Ashcroft leads a talented cast through material which is sometimes difficult to watch, because it shows shameful behaviors the world at large profited from and turned a blind eye toward. Tim Piggot-Smith is equally remarkable as a complex man who’s bigotries cost him and those around him more than can be calculated. Among the many unforgettable moments are scenes depicting the rape and beating of an English woman and her Indian lover, as well as an entire train of people being murdered during the partition of India. Yet the series is not all doom and gloom. It is not, however, a series of much humor.
Instead, like A Passage to India, which also starred Ashcroft, this carefully crafted, lushly photographed work concerns itself with the attitudes and conditions of a vanishing arrangement, and the dawn of a new system. There is violence, fear, hatred, cruelty and an overwhelming sense of inevitability and dread. Some true believers fail to see where things are heading, while others work to set themselves up as best they can for an uncertain future. Nobody escapes unharmed, losing one or more of life, limb, property, financial or emotional security and, most of all, a place to call home. By the end, even those who believe they have found new purpose or place no longer have a home in the way they once did. This is a series about loss.
People lose their lives, loved ones, homes, and more. The story begins with Hari Kumar, an Indian who identifies as English, who has a bankrupt father. He works as a journalist, and comes across a woman, Daphne Manners, who is not as prejudiced as her fellows. She and Hari become lovers. One night, while making love in a public garden, they are attacked. Daphne is gang raped and Hari is accused of the crime, persecuted by Ronald Merrick, a vicious policeman, who has had designs on Daphne. Hari is sent to live in prison, along with other educated Indians, and Daphne dies giving birth to the child, a daughter, who ends up living with her great-aunt.
This aunt, Lady Manners, is the widow of a provincial governor and the neighbor and friend of a young woman named Sarah Layton. Sarah’s father is a prisoner of war in Germany, and her sister, Susan, is engaged to an Indian Army Officer, Teddie Bingham. When his best man becomes ill, he asks another friend, Merrick, to step in, and Merrick decides to use the Laytons as a stepping stone to advance his career. Meanwhile, gossip about his handling of the Kumar case dogs him. After Teddie dies in fighting in Burma alongside Merrick, Merrick has his arm amputated and his face disfigured from burns. Lady Manners, sensing Merrick is less than he appears, launches an inquiry into the Kumar case. The way the case is handled shows much about how the British have turned the Hindi and Muslim factions against one another.
At this point, the audience would expect the series to become a thriller, or a mystery to be solved. Instead, it take a different approach. The series becomes an in depth examination of the divides across class and race, and the connections therein, within the British Empire and India itself. As the series careens to its conclusion, the focus on Kumar and his case is left behind, as Sarah, Susan and Merrick become the true central figures, alongside a charming Muslim aristocrat, Kasim.
Merrick finds his career damaged from the inquiry, and amidst the return of Sarah’s father following the end of the Second World War, Merrick worms his way into the family by taking advantage of Susan’s fragile mental state following the birth of her son with the late Teddie. While Sarah can never prove what Merrick is up to, she does not do nearly enough to stop him, and as the series demonstrates, cultural norms prohibited her from being effective, as an unmarried woman, from causing even a disgraced officer, the sort of justice he deserved.
Yet the series most effective moment may come during the partition of India, where Kasim sacrifices himself to save the lives of his friends, including the Laytons, as a Hindi mob murders him and all other Muslims aboard the train they were taking home. Shortly before that, Merrick winds up dead, caught in a homosexual clinch, and the British government quickly hushes things up, in order to avoid scandal. Once everyone is seen safely home, Merrick’s right hand man, Perron, who only ever wanted the truth, goes to visit the now free Hari Kumar, who teaches English to students in a poor neighborhood. Hari is not there, but Perron remarks to himself that Hari was caught in the impossible position of being between India and England.
This is not a rocket to the moon of a series. This is a series which has smaller pleasures, and ones which require patience. Second viewings may be needed to catch everything. It is splendidly acted, beautifully shot and may seem dull to those looking for outright action. Yet it is nothing short of miraculous in how it expresses the tensions found in the late stages of British occupation of India.
This is also a series of many parts. The first section, aside from Merrick, is nearly unconnected to the rest of it, aside from Manners being our introduction to the Laytons, but this is because this is a series about ideas, and themes. In a sense, we are watching the various castes of British Imperialism be explored in segmented fashion. The series gives the audience much to think about, yet, aside from a few moments, not a lot to feel. This is not to call the series sterile, but it is “mannered” in a way few programs are today, though this could be a result of the source material. Nevertheless, it remains a landmark among television miniseries.