Practicalmadness

"Snark or da mammoth gets it! 'No! Not the tar pit! Nooo!'"
- Jenny, holding Mammoth (one of my stuffed toys) by the tail and lowering him slowly toward the mattress.

Never let it be said that the BBC doesn't go all-out with its epic literary miniseries, or that they're incapable of reducing said epic literacy to 'The League of Gentlemen meets The Lord of the Rings'. Gormenghast features just about every Respected British Thespian you've ever heard of and many you should have, plus a member of the aforementioned League, and yet it doesn't have quite the grandeur it seems to aspire to.

Probably because of scenes like the one I mentioned the other day (where Steve Pemberton runs around naked and screaming), or the fact that none of the Lords and Ladies of the House of Groan really come off as more than...well, they're fine in that grand old tradition of soap operas and class comedies, but their tragic fall seems to be waiting for a laugh line. Which, I suppose, is the point, but this is the BBC. Where is my classiness? Where is my grandeur!

Episodes One and Two are the strongest, detailing Steerpike's (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) rise from the kitchens (and escape from the odious cook, Swelter (Richard Griffiths)) to the working middle class as an assistant to various key courtiers, as well as the beginnings of his plan to start a revolution by killing off the Groans. In the first show, Titus Groan, the heir to the throne and son of the Earl of Gormenghast (Ian Richardson), is born. In the second episode, the Earl's library is burned down, he subsequently comes to believe he is an owl and kills himself (by owl, natch) and the infant Titus is crowned Earl.

What I'm getting at, or trying to get at, is that the series works so much better before Titus Groan starts talking. He's just a whiny little ass; we don't care that he hates his station or tradition or even Steerpike. We really don't give a damn if he manages to fuck the Wild Girl, because he's such a nothing character and so totally upstaged by Rhys-Meyers, Celia Imrie, Christopher Lee, John Sessions, Fiona Shaw, Stephen Fry...need I go on? It's not that Cameron Powrie and Andrew Richardson (playing Titus at 12 and 17, respectively) are bad or less pedigreed performers. He's just a little ass of a character and I wanted to reach into the screen and slap him with a large herring. No, larger.

Neve McIntosh is all right as the mad Lady Fuchsia, who ages from 15 to 32 over the course of the series. It's not her fault that Rhys-Meyers plays Steerpike as a stock Charming Villain who (performancewise) is driven by his need to express himself through villainy more than his alleged feelings for Fuchsia. (Note to Steerpike: the way to a woman's heart is through her ring finger, stomach or lustful thoughts, not pet monkeys named Satan.)

Christopher Lee is even better in Gormenghast than in Lord of the Rings, and here he even plays a good guy. So what if he says more words in five minutes of LOTR than he does in this entire miniseries? Or that he dies a rather Scatman Crothers-esque death so that Whinyass (aka Titus) can step up and claim his birthright?

Sigh. What a waste.