Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Tom Bateman, Johnny Flynn, Claudia Jessie, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale, Ellie Kendrick, Robert Pugh, Charlie Rowe, Sian Clifford, Martin Clunes, David Flynn, Matthew Baynton, Monica Dolan, Patrick FitzSymons, Felicity Montague, Claire Skinner, Peter Wright, Toby Williams, Elizabeth Barrington, Richie Campbell, Frances de la Tour, Mike Grady, Anthony Head, Suranne Jones.
In amongst all the talk of change and nonsensical thought that women cannot occupy a character of strength and single-minded fortitude, it is the framing of past literature’s heroines that have always been a fantastic draw for the television companies to relay on with their adaptations and new writings. It is a nonsense uttered by some that women cannot occupy such a role, when all know the best of men are raised, loved and pushed to be great themselves by women of absolute charm, purpose and devastatingly devilish intent. It is in the pursuit of vanity, egotism and narcissism by any of the genders that make for the world to be of empty value, of nothing more than trinkets and baubles, of arrogance in believing that all belongs only to them.
In William Makepeace Thackery’s Vanity Fair, adapted with keen precision, holding the late Georgian era in reverence and modern-day social observance adopted by Gwyneth Hughes, what soon becomes witnessed is that the art of social climbing is not a new phenomenon, the only trouble is in today’s terms it is usually the truly vain which seem to succeed, the need for validation, the aspiration to be famous for famous sake is heightened to such a degree that women such as the screenplay’s two heroines Becky Sharp and the more conservative, god fearing Amelia Sedley would no doubt be embarrassed by the standards of the modern world.
The lavish affair that the story-line demands is realised and dissected with great skill, the reflection of the Napoleonic Era and the oncoming less than agreeable Victorian attitudes to come, are painted with the dexterity of a two- handed painter, able to bring together the foreground and the backdrop in equal measure, the continuous cycle of respect to William M. Thackery’s work always kept firmly in mind.
In Olivia Cooke, the character of Becky Sharp is perhaps at her greatest, the scheming and relentless pursuit of taking the weaker sex of men for all that they possess is brutal, a pleasure that the television voyeur cannot but enjoy and with a cast that includes Martin Clunes in arguably one of his finest performances, Simon Russell Beale proving once again that his life as one of the R.S.C.’s finest ever accomplished actors is not wasted when it comes to breathing life into a television character, and Claudia Jessie providing a dramatic counterpoint to Ms. Cooke’s realised cynicism as her friend Amelia Sedley, this 2018 adaptation of Vanity Fair hit the ground running and has proved to be a dramatic, pleasurable ride.
A classic in its own right, Gwyneth Hughes’s adaptation of Vanity Fair is a single-minded, glorious pursuit of a truth we must all bare, that we as human beings are but playthings to our desires, and only the truly virtuous can wriggle free of its clutches.
Ian D. Hall