WHAT WOULD WILKIE WANT
WITH WOMAN IN WHITE?
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was a well-recognized English novelist, one who specialized in “sensational” novels, including his first big hit, The Woman in White (1859), and who, with Charles Dickens, co-wrote a stage adaptation of it, which had a successful London run.
This latest television version — written by Fiona Seres and directed by Carl Tibbets — is in five parts, yet keeps the suspense and Victorian mores intact. Forgoing the epistolary style of the novel the (somewhat) difficult plot involves a mid-20s painter, Walter Hartright (Ben Hardy), who runs into a ghostly “woman in white” (Jessie Buckley) on London’s Hampstead Heath. He helps her out before discovering that she has just escaped from an insane asylum. With labyrinthine plotting, he befriends a fellow who introduces him to a minor aristocrat (Charles Dance) in the countryside who has a beautiful niece; amazingly to Walter, she looks just like the ghostly figure he saw in London.
The complications are many and the solutions take their time amid grave toll on our characters. But it’s an attractive version, with the kind of quality acting from British actors we tend to take for granted. Hardy is handsome and energetic; Buckley is both sweet and gritty as the mother/daughter characters, and Riccardo Scamarcio shines as a broody and dangerous Italian friend of the mentally-ill husband (Dougray Scott) of the young, feisty sister (Olivia Vinall) to the preyed-upon wife. Other admired character actors are Ruth Sheen, Kerry Fox, Art Malik and Joanna Scanlan.
The lush English countryside is well-shot by cinematographer Eben Bolter, with solid editing by Helen Chapman. That they have made this 160-year-old story intriguing and watchable is a fine testament to the quality of British television, with PBS co-producing.
The Woman in White
PBS
1 disc | 273 minutes | rated PG
released November 6, 2018
available on Blu-ray, DVD, and streaming at PBS and Amazon