This adaptation of The Woman in White begins with a woman in black. She is Wilkie Collins’ best character, Marian Halcombe (played by Jessie Buckley), who has come to see a man called Mr Nash for help. She is wearing black – including veil – because she’s in mourning.
“The coroner stated that the cause of death was natural, which we know to be a lie,” she says.
“There’s nothing to suggest these men are guilty …” Mr Nash begins.
“Of course they’re guilty!” Miss Halcombe interrupts, forcefully. “How is it men crush women time and time again and go unpunished?”
Miss Halcombe goes on to say they need to come together, gather the evidence and show the world who these men really are.
And already Fiona Seres’ period adaptation of the classic Victorian sensation novel, directed by Carl Tibbetts, is reverberating in the present day. Not just with its #MeToo-ness, but also in having a 21st-century flash-forward structure that teases and hints without giving too much away, adding intrigue and momentum. This meeting with Mr Nash is later; stuff has already happened. Significant stuff, huge stuff …
Then it’s back to the beginning – Collins’s one. Good-hearted artist Walter Hartright (Ben Hardy off EastEnders, innit, poshed up a bit here) is living a poor, bohemian artist’s life in London, hanging out with his Italian mate, Pesca. Then he has his creepy encounter with a woman wearing white on the heath between the capital and the nearby village of Hampstead, where his mother lives. (Interesting that the same place is now better known as place for encounters with men … maybe not that interesting.)
She – Anne, who wears only white because she sees and hears things in vivid colour (is that synesthesia?) – is played by Olivia Vinall … who also plays Laura Fairlie. That could have been awkward, but actually it works well. They’re supposed to look similar, but not identical. And so they do. Credit to the makeup people and also to Vinall for putting in two distinct performances. (The Anne role must have been a blessing, frankly, as Laura is a bit meh. It’s a mystery why Walter falls in love with her, rather than her way-more-interesting half-sister, Marian.) But they – Laura and Anne – remain similar enough to give credibility to any identity mashups that may or may not happen down the line.
Identity theft! Again, a very modern issue – pretty much like watching the news. That’s if any identity theft/data harvesting occurs. It’s hard to know with TWIW, spoiler-wise; chances are that even if you haven’t read it you will have seen one of the screen/stage adaptations. But I suppose it’s possible you have been locked away in an asylum and haven’t. Or in Honduras perhaps.
Anyway, this is a splendid one – because it strikes its contemporary chord while hanging on to an atmosphere of gothic creepiness (sometimes proper scary). And because of the performances. Aforementioned ones; and also, when we get to Limmeridge house, Charles Dance’s self-absorbed and morally vacuous Mr Fairlie; and Dougray Scott’s dastardly, dark, seriously moustachioed Sir Percival Glyde.
Sir Percival is betrothed to Laura, although that may have more to do with the fact that she’s worth £20,000 (loads of money in 1859) than anything else. Sir Percival may also have dark secrets and a connection with Anne.
And Laura will go along with the match, even though she is frightened of him – because she is a woman and that’s what women did in those days. Even though she would much rather be with her and Marian’s new art tutor, nice Mr Hartright, walking in the dunes, skinny-dipping (although women definitely didn’t do that in those days), learning about perspective and how to paint the hills of Cumberland.
The scenery is lovely, in an eerie way, even if it isn’t entirely convincing as Cumberland, and looks much more like Country Down and the Mourne mountains. A case of attempted identity theft that didn’t quite come off, perhaps. Not that it really matters.
What does come off is that The Woman in White fills the void left by the (controversial) end of Ordeal By Innocence the previous weekend. Classy BBC drama – period but fresh – for a Sunday night.
And the woman in black? Marian Halcombe at the start, in the future. Mourning for whom, exactly? You know, don’t you? Or do you. Does she even know …?
