I haven't read the Tom Sharp novel this mess was based on but the series was hardly conducive to my taking it up.
The story: Geraldine James is a frustrated harridan in a marriage of convenience to a rich Member of Parliament (George Cole). He bought her family stately home upon their marriage. She'd like a divorce but will lose her family home if he grants it.
Cole wants to see a motorway extended through the old home place for the money but as he can't be seen to profit by it he schemes to make the motorway inevitable while he pretends to oppose it.
So far, so good. If Sharpe (or whomever) had left it at that it would have been brilliant.
By this point in his career Cole has managed to perfect a certain level of smarm that makes his characters like this perfectly marvelous. The best you can say for Geraldine James, however, is that she's loud.
The normally loathsome Paul Brooke (catch his Wormtongue in BBC radio's "Lord of the Rings") does well in a likeable role for once (though at one point, while David Suchet is going off, it looks like he's about to start giggling).
David Suchet portrays Blott, sevant and handyman devoted to his mistress (James). He turns in a very curious performance indeed, by turns amusing and irritating.
Simon Cadell comes off best as the clueless "man from the ministry" with the permanently lopsided mouth. Also from the Ministry is erstwhile pop sensation Jeremy Clyde turning in a typically good performance, but with nothing special about his character.
What ruins the series for me most (though it's not all) is the pervasive air of bizarre sexuality. Actually seeing a naked George Cole strapped to a bed on a baby's bonnet is not conducive to my appetite. Nor is seeing a deeply humiliated Simon Cadell running around starkers (a scene that might possibly have worked better on the printed page; though, as I said, I haven't read the book so I don't know). Nor is seeing Geraldine James' breast bobbling out of her clothes. What happened to her since "The Jewel in the Crown"?
The show has plenty of good ideas and I even smiled a time or two (especially at Cadell) but the whole thing had a focus on the dirty side (and I don't mean the sex). Too, it's incredibly uneven. Cole, James, Suchet, Brooke, Cadell and other major characters seem to belong to their own world, far above little things like reality. So far as their difference from reality they might be Zaphod Beeblebrox. But in mob scenes and other moments the extras and so forth are clearly 1980s through and through, bringing the series down to a level of realism the main characters hardly belong in (especially the weird Suchet).
Despite some clever plot machinations on Cole's part and a few solid comic performances, the series as a whole turned me off. Someone advise the distinguished George Cole to keep his kit on.
A much better show along similar lines was an episode called "Grace" from the series "Affairs of the Heart" (based on a Henry James story) where Cole plays a rich man who owns rhe mortgage on Jeremy Brett's stately home and Diana Rigg is the rich American widow who rides in and saves the day. Catch it on Youtube.
