More on Julian’s Dr. Thorne TV adaptation. Does this sound appealing Downton fans?
As Downton Abbey’s creator adapts a classic tale of snobbery with violence… will we all fall in love with a Trollope?
News that Julian Fellowes is to adapt Anthony Trollope’s novel Dr Thorne as a three-part TV series should thrill romantics, readers of the Victorian novelist and lovers of British drama alike.
Two hundred years after Trollope’s birth, he is suddenly fashionable again, and the Downton Abbey creator is the perfect person to do him justice.
Trollope’s glorious mix of lovable and loathsome characters, allied to Oscar-winning Fellowes’s expert treatment of class, psycho-drama and gripping Sunday night TV, should be a winning team.
Trollope’s plain, unaffected prose means that he is not the greatest stylist of all time, but he is without doubt one of the greatest story-tellers; and Dr Thorne shows why.
The 1858 novel, which grips you from the beginning with a seduction, a murder and a secret birth, tells the tale of illegitimate and penniless Mary, who is desperately in love with Frank Gresham, heir to an impoverished aristocratic family.
Having been adopted and raised by kindly Dr Thorne, Mary knows her love is returned — but Frank’s snobbish mother, Lady Arabella de Courcy, is set against a match.
Frank is expected to save his family’s fortune by marrying someone high born and wealthy, such as heiress Martha Dunstable.
Since he loves Mary and his family, which is he to put first?
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