It's about time to head to City Center.
DR JohnG, you asked about THE GOOD COMPANIONS. I've got three hours to go, and I'm expecting some unhappy moments: there's been to much about one character's heart, the discreet coughing into a handkerchief by the costume designer, but since i do not know the novel, i have no idea what's going to happen. At the end of the first DVD, there's a wonderful interview with J.B. Priestley abut the novel, accompanied by scenes from the two film versions.
I think the series is fascinating, and the cast is really wonderful. Judy Cornwell, whom I only knew as Hyacinth Bucket’s sister Daisy, is about 60 pounds lighter and looks much like Prunella Scales as Miss Trant, Jan Francis is wonderful as Suzy Dean, and John Stratton as Oakroyd is really good. There are several guest star appearances in small roles: Nigel Hawthorne as Miss Trant’s vicar, Denis Lawson as Albert Oakroyd’s friend, etc. If Hollywood had cast this, everyone would have been much more photogenic and less eccentric, and the company of pierrots is made up of some really eccentric and often rather grotesque individuals. The first three hours of the piece concverns te history of Oakroyd, Miss Trant. Jolliphant, and how their lives merge.
There are a zillion musical numbers sung not only in the onstage pierrot show moments but in the characters' daily lives: “On The Road” seems to be the theme song of Miss Trant, Oakroyd, and Jolliphant, and it's sung many tmes with different lyrics onstage and off; there’s a huge song and dance on a pier led by Miss Trant, with some dancing sailors, and everyone in the cast, and a very strange one on the steps and platforms of a train station where the company has to change trains,
The only musical number that's bothered me so far occurred when Jolliphant tells Suzy he loves her and she goes into this Bollywood-like number, singing and dancing about two levels of a tram before she rejects him. It may have been meant to show how lightly she takes serious emotion, but it took me completely out of the scene and that bothered me.
The look of 1930s industrial small-city England, and scenery and costumes are really great. This series should be available on a Region 1 DVD.