Michael Idato is the culture editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Had it been a Marvel comic book, what followed might have left the author labelled something of a superfan. The sixth episode of Belgravia saw Charles Pope discover who his real parents were - Anne Trenchard's (Tasmin Greig) daughter Sophia Trenchard (Emily Reid… If you’re currently enjoying “Little Fires Everywhere,” chances are you’ll also be riveted by “Belgravia,” which shares many key themes and elements from the show, such as class division, hidden secrets, children separated from their parents and characters who fail to leave well enough alone. “Belgravia” is often more basic than captivating, even with all its 19th-century grandeur and two shipshape performances from Walter and Greig, whose characters ally themselves to stage-manage a standard-issue conclusion. This flashback prologue (and its tragic outcome) occurs in short order in the first episode, so it’s not a huge spoiler to simply note the unplanned birth of a baby boy, who is spirited away by the Trenchards to an adoptive family. From the instant he locks eyes with Lady Maria Grey (a delightful Ella Purnell), it’s clear that history is about to repeat itself, albeit with the genders flipped. John Bellasis (Adam James), the countess’s greedy nephew (and “Belgravia’s” designated villain), can’t wait to get his hands on the family fortune. ", For the most part, Fellowes says, what reflects the present most notably is "how similar people are in their emotional responses, certainly as recently as the 19th century. For its twenty-minute prologue, “Belgravia” chronicles the hours leading up to 1815’s bloody battle of Waterloo, as Trenchant’s daughter, Sophia (Emily Reid), warns her mother against “another kind of snobbery.” Anne’s fear that no good could come from Sophia being romantically entangled with Lord Edmund Bellasis (Jeremy Neumark Jones), a man ranking far above her class, is quickly dwarfed by the shattering toll of war. Q: How did you react when you heard you'd got the part of Sophia in Belgravia? Which is why the 70-year-old creator of Downton Abbey chose the ball, and not the more famous battles that followed it, as the place to begin the story. Rather than keep a lid on it, the countess sees an opportunity. There’s no question Sophia’s grown son, Charles Pope, could easily be mistaken for Scrooge’s exuberantly genial nephew, as portrayed by endearing newcomer Jack Bardoe. It is the sort of global crisis that causes us to question the societal barriers that normally divide our species, blinding us to our true status as one human family. If I had been making a movie, I would have had two hours to tell the story and a lot would have to go, but in this instance we needed to lose very little.". "Given that the female characters define the story, it would seem to me quite wrong to begin the tale on the battlefield, where our principals, by definition, could make no appearance. “Belgravia,” a six-episode British period drama from “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes (adapted from his 2016 novel), is everything you want it to be, but not one bit more: a pedigreed, crunchy-gravel story with all the trimmings and light melodramas, set in London’s most affluent neighborhood in 1841, where an old family secret is just dying to get out.
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", Philip Glenister, Julian Fellowes, Tamsin Greig on the set of Belgravia.Credit:BBC First. For information on how to access the channel, visit epix.com. Tamsin Greig and Emily Reid as Anne and Sophia Trenchard in Belgravia. Everyone understands grief, and they can empathise with any mother who has lost a child.

I've been so lucky to be part of this wonderful product Hitchcock knew that a bomb would be infinitely scarier if the audience were aware of its placement under a table where two oblivious characters were seated. It will also leave you smiling, which may be reason enough to tune in. Belgravia (one hour) premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Epix. The story introduces its key players at the ball – James (Philip Glenister) and Anne Trenchard (Tamsin Greig), their daughter Sophia (Emily Reid) and her potential suitor Edmund Bellasis (Jeremy Neumark Jones) – and picks up the story later in the wealthy London suburb of Belgravia. "That said, Downton was set against the decline of a certain civilisation, Belgravia is about the rise and rise of new men and new fortunes in a new, Victorian world," he adds. Adapted by Julian Fellowes from his own 2016 novel, this handsomely mounted miniseries may be set largely in London during the 1840s, yet it feels no different from the high society of New York City circa 1870s portrayed by Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence, “a world balanced so precariously that its harmony could be shattered by a whisper.” The simple act of hand-holding carries more erotic tension than most sex scenes, as young lovers boldly defy their given stations, opting to prioritize their happiness over the expectations of their elders. Significantly, its origin as a novel means Belgravia comes to the screen as "a complete and single narrative, not an on-going drama that can meander forward for years". Epix’s Belgravia Breaks Societal Barriers to Enormously Satisfying Effect, The West Wing Returns for an HBO Max Special, Touring Masterworks: Adam Nayman Discusses His New Book on Paul Thomas Anderson, CIFF 2020: Black Perspectives Program Highlights Diverse Voices. ... He’s also starred in Friday Night Dinner (opposite Belgravia co-star Tamsin Greig), and more recently historical dramas Chernobyl and Catherine the Great. That being said, they are, for the most part, enormously satisfying, resulting in a final episode that consists of one cathartic payoff and nail-biting set piece after another.

"That there is no need to keep all the plates spinning at the end, so they may be taken up and moved around for the next series, is a freedom," he says.

The viewers are in on this secret almost from the beginning, which turns the series into a protracted exercise of hurry-up-and-wait, to see if things turn out all right. Determined to pay back the gambling debt of his hopeless father, an amusingly crooked reverend (James Fleet), John also has no qualms with taking advantage of various servants who will commit treason against their employers if it enables them to secure a small fortune of their own. His gravest fault, in fact, is that he is too nice and trusting of people and institutions that are intent on crushing him. The main action begins once the story jumps ahead twenty-six years, where Anne and her husband James (Philip Glenister) have become part of the “nouveau riche,” thanks to his efforts in helping construct the affluent London district of Belgravia, their new home.

"The main relationship of the piece in fact concerns two women, different in many ways but united by their shared loss of a child," Fellowes says. What makes this series bittersweet, in the end, is the fact that it’s more about the mending of a family than the reshaping of a broken society, though its social commentary does extend past the specifics of its plot.

Here, a successful building developer, James Trenchard (Philip Glenister), and his instinctively circumspect wife, Anne (Tamsin Greig), have risen to a comfortable rung on the ladder during a time of progress in the early years of the Victorian age. The real tension in “Belgravia” (premiering Sunday on premium cable channel Epix) is attuned to class and status, as it usually is in Fellowes’s work.

For a writer, he says, confining the story to six hours offered great flexibility.
I kept hoping Kerry Washington’s antiheroine from “Little Fires” would turn up, if only to shut down his incessant whining with her great line, “You didn’t make good choices, you had good choices.” Yet Fellowes and director John Alexander do a fine job of illuminating the underlying tragedy even within their most devious characters, such as Oliver’s miserable wife, Susan (Alice Eve), who’s only too happy to fall into bed with John in order to climb the social ladder.


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