A Suitably Massive Middlemarch

 E. M. Foster--whose own novels have proved good meat for those who re-cook old novels into TV miniseries and Hollywood winners-once wrote that “it is on her massiveness that George Eliot depends-she has no nicety of style. ”

There is a degree of truth in the comment-its first part, anyway. Middlemarch, long considered this English Victorian novelist’ s masterpiece, is certainly no miniature.

When the BBC’ s suitably massive television adaptation of Middlemarch was aired in Britain, it became compulsive viewing for millions and more than 105, 000 of them went out and bought the book (others of us already owned it and lifted it off the shelf) .

It is one of the fascinations of television that, while it is more than ever held responsible for luring the world into illiteracy, it can also powerfully attract viewers to buy and even (who knows?) to read some of the great classics.

Whoever reads the book after seeing the series will find it virtually impossible not to see the characters in his or her mind’ s eye exactly as the cast of actors portrays them. But half the fun of comparing the inevitably leaner TV version-cut, edited, and sometimes re-arranged-with the steady unfolding of the original novel is in assessing the pluses and minuses of turning written pages Into screen Images.

In the opinion of those who know, Eliot was a potentially first-rate TV writer. In a BBC documentary about the making of the series, Andrew Davies, Who wrote the screenplay, said he thought George Eliot (or Mary Ann Evans, to use her real name) “had all the elements that you would look for now if you were looking for a very strong drama serial, I mean, she could go along and sell. . . to any TV network now. . . just update it a little bit.

In practice, Davies’ s screenplay does not “update” the novel jarringly (OK, characters kiss on screen where they only held hands in the book, but who’ s fussing?) and even frequently quotes Eliot’ s dialog almost verbatim.

Mr. Davies, in the same documentary, also mentions one difficulty in handing over a classic novel to actors: “They’ ve all got their copies” of the original, he says, and often ask why their particular character’ s most “wonderful bits” have been denied them. These appeals must be resisted, Davies says, because they likely will conflict with the attempt to “distill the essence of the book” .

On the other hand, actors with a sensitive feel for the inner life of their character (as almost all have in this series) can flesh out or redeem what might be only hinted at in the screenplay.

The television version accords Middlemarch, the community, with all its gossip and prejudice, goodness and despair, and corruption and innocence, the role of chief protagonist. It suggests the feel of the place with marvelous conviction, through scrupulous attention to details of the period, of building and prop and costume, but also because of the leisurely pace at which the story develops. The whole thing is done with taste and style.