Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Dominic West, Adeel Akhtar, David Oyelowo, Lily Collins, Olivia Coleman, David Bradley, Ellie Bamber, Erin Kellyman, Emma Fielding, Enzo Cilenti, Donald Sumpter, Andre Pasquasy, Turlough Convery, Archie Madekwe, Josh O’Connor, Joseph Quinn, Natalie Simpson, Angela Wynter, Reece Yates, Derek Jacobi, Jerome Flynn, Darren Kent, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Josef Altin, Anna Calder-Marshall, Alan David, Ron Cook, Archie Madekwe, Lorcan Cranitch, Hayley Carmichael.
The story of Jean Valjean and his ward Cosette is so deeply engrained in to the minds of musical theatre audiences and film crowds that it is hard to imagine that there is anyone around who won’t have heard the tale of suffering and abject despair that is Victor Hugo’s undoubted literary masterpiece. Yet despite that, all too many will have never actually given the book a second glance, it may reside on the book shelves, glanced at the cover once in a while in a serious attempt to take in the French author’s grand vision and weaving of strands that scarred France in the early part of the 19th Century but it rarely gets read, it seldom gets digested, far easier to put on the film and wallow in the performance of Hugh Jackman, more pleasing to the ear, more uplifting for the spirit.
Les Miserables has had many adaptions, a multitude of retellings, some successful, many dubious, a few down right cynical, perhaps the more enlightened is the 1963- 1967 American television drama The Fugitive, a modern take on the old master, and yet even then the utter abject depravity, the filth, the squalor, the disease, the determination of those at the barricades, the pity of senselessness and the lack of hope will never find its way into the translation, not even the outstanding musical adaptation comes truly close.
It is therefore with appreciation that the novel perhaps finds its visual equal with Dominic West at the helm as the former escaped convict turned philanthropist, businessman and reluctant hero, a man so possessed by his demons that the world he inhabits in the aftermath of the French defeat at Waterloo is rank with hypocrisy and division, that the stench of brutality is only masked by the fear of hope. It is to this that Dominic West’s portrayal of Jean Valjean is to be commended, honoured, an impossible ask made superb.
It is in the detail of examination of 19th Century France, the division between those who saw Bonaparte as a saviour to the ideals of the Republic and those who foresaw the damnation that would come, the havoc that would lead to social unrest and with it the rampant poverty and death, that makes this particular version satisfying, the love of country and the hope that comes with freedom all embroiled into a brutal examination of uncivil war and the backdrop of supposed gentility.
With an immense cast that lived up to the billing and the characters they inhabit over the six hours of television, the aforementioned Dominic West, the sublime Adeel Akhtar as Thenardier, David Oyelowo as a wonderfully intense Javert, Emma Fielding as Nicolette, Lilly Collins as Fantine and Olivia Coleman as Madame Thenardier, this was arguably as close as you could ask for in terms of realism and objectivity, the series grandly captures the essence of Hugo’s novel and observations, but it has something else as well, a heart that beats just as rapid, just as passionate, and just as rigorous as its written cousin.
An exquisitely performed drama, a bench mark for writers wishing to delve into such adaptions.
Ian D. Hall