Pursuing West's Valjean to the ends of the Earth is Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo). Opinion: Fosse/Verdon is great, ravishing television about theatre, love and lifeĬBC’s Street Legal reboot cancelled after just six episodes Opinion: Jann Arden’s foray into television is fine but far too frantic His journey is overshadowed by one Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo) who won’t rest until Valjean is back in prison. All this while Valjean makes his way across France, postprison and trying manfully to keep on the straight and narrow, but harbouring distaste for injustice, class snobbery and callousness. By Episode 2, Fantine is reduced to living a horrific life of poverty and regret. But anyone can see what he’s after and where it will end. He tells her he’s a poet and she will be his muse.
And, back in Paris, naïve seamstress Fantine (Lily Collins) is being seduced by upper-class rogue Felix. Meanwhile, our central anti-hero Jean Valjean (Dominic West doing a wickedly robust, stoic man of the people) is breaking rocks in prison.
It sounds like a complex plot, and yet it isn’t. Thus begins the drama’s main theme of goodness triumphing over hard-hearted pomposity and cruelty. But, wait, a good-hearted maid tells the crushed Pontmercy how he can see his son at church on Sundays. Also, Pontmercy can’t see his son, of whom Gillenormand is now in charge. He is loftily informed that Napoleon was a scoundrel and Pontmercy, who fought in Napoleon’s army, is a traitor to his class. In Paris, one Monsieur Pontmercy, whom we’ve already met as a nice army officer at Waterloo (he helped a thief who will reappear later), is trying to make peace with his upper-class father-in-law, Gillenormand (David Bradley from Game of Thrones and every British drama of the past decade). The revolution is to be forgotten.” Then we are thrust into the main characters and main ingredients of the story.ĭominic West does a wickedly robust, stoic man of the people as anti-hero Jean Valjean. All the dead, all the killing, and for what? The on-screen intro says this: “After 20 years of war, France is defeated and Napoleon is exiled. It has a formidable visual sweep that starts with a stunning overhead shot of the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo. There’s nothing shabby about this forceful series. Speaking at a conference last year he said, “I thought it’s important that people realize there is a lot more to Les Misérables than that sort of shoddy farrago.” Indeed, “shoddy farrago.” Well said. BBCĭavies is the chap who has written many nifty, fast-paced and visceral adaptations of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, and who did the original House of Cards, and he approaches the book as something very distinct from the hit musical and the movie. Lily Collins portrays the seamstress Fantine. It is a new six-part British dramatization of Victor Hugo’s original novel, deftly done by Andrew Davies.
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This is not the musical, nor is it the clumsy movie version featuring Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway warbling away about love and dignity and stuff like that. on Masterpiece) is dragon-free drama, a heroic poem of a story about the have-nots and, let it be noted, also song-free. And if your taste runs to epic drama about good and evil, with compelling characters and sumptuous visuals – and not Game of Thrones – have I got a good recommendation for you. This weekend will find a lot of people more enthralled by the final round of the Masters or, heaven help us, the hockey playoffs. Still, not everyone is totally enthralled. Some of us feel we dare not go out in public without a prepared statement on Jon Snow, the Iron Throne and the weather in Westeros. If you’ve had it up to the eyeballs with the hype about the Game of Thrones final season (Sunday, HBO, 9 p.m.) you have my sympathy.
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