At first sight some 19th century architects had improbably long careers; for instance Barry, Pugin and Scott. As you know, their children took up the architectural baton from their fathers’ giving this impression.
Likewise Davies dominates as a TV scriptwriter. Actually I cannot think of another as talented and prolific. Actually I cannot think of another. Russell T Davies, born in Swansea in 1963, read English literature at Worcester College, Oxford. He became fascinated by writers like Dickens and the ways in which they told stories. This led him to write plays allowing his talent to develop until he made the crossover to TV. The rest is history. I don’t watch much TV but I saw Queer as Folk and A Very English Scandal, about Jeremy Thorpe. He wrote much, much more and you might know him for writing Doctor Who, 2005 – 2010 and again last year.
Andrew Davies was born in Cardiff in 1937. He read English at University College, London and became a teacher and then a lecturer at Coventry College of Education, now part of Warwick University. In tandem with his teaching career he was a prolific playwright for radio. Like his Welsh namesake he switched to TV. He wrote House of Cards, adapted from the political thriller by Michael Dobbs, but his fame lies in his adaptations of classic novels. He has a sure ear for dialogue, never committing a linguistic solecism of which I am aware. Such a lapse would shatter the whole edifice of these complex productions. My favourite is Vanity Fair, partly because I enjoy and admire Thackeray’s masterpiece, but I am picking a gem out of a jewel box.
These productions, usually BBC, are of course more than the script but the script’s the thing wherein the attention of the audience is caught. Leaden dialogue and a plot that moves like treacle guarantees a TV turkey. The productions are perhaps a little formulaic but what a formula. Young good looking actors, older character actors (send for Miriam Margolyes), costumes, locations, camera work combine to make utterly convincing escapism from the way we live now.
The Way We Live Now is his version of Trollope’s novel, written fourteen years after he met Kate Field. Her influence is apparent in the splendid character, Mrs Hurtle, a gun-toting American who shot a man in Oregon and fought a duel with her husband. More than that, the women in TWWLN are often stronger and more determined than the men. I may have more to say about The Way We Live Now, the Davies version. Meanwhile, I salute the virtuosity of the Davies double act.
In his autobiography, Trollope says that “The book has the fault which is to be attributed to almost all satires, whether in prose or verse. The accusations are exaggerated. The vices are coloured, so as to make effect rather than to represent truth. Who, when the lash of objurgation is in his hands, can so moderate his arm as never to strike harder than justice would require? The spirit which produces the satire is honest enough, but the very desire which moves the satirist to do his work energetically makes him dishonest. In other respects The Way We Live Now was, as a satire, powerful and good.”
I believe that I have read somewhere that Mrs. Hurtle was modeled on Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife. If so, it was probably in the editor’s introduction to The Amateur Emigrant.