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The Cazalets

9:00 pm BBC1

by Allison Graham

It is 1938, and the storm clouds of war are gathering over Europe.  But the prospect of conflict seems very far away for the Cazalet dynasty as they gather for a country-house weekend.  The family is cacooned by snobbery, complacency and privilege in an Elysian England where the sun always seems to shine.  

Of course, things are not what they seem in the first episode of this major six-part series based on Elizabeth Jane Howard's novels.  Behind the facade, the Cazalets are riven by deceit and prejudice.  They play tennis on sun-soaked lawns together, and swim in dappled seas, or sit on deckchairs reading magazines.  But there are some dark forces at work.

The notable rotter in this hardly prepossessing bunch is Edward (a vulpine Stephen Dillane), an ostensibly happily married family man whose frequent "business lunches" have nothing to do with business or lunch, though there is always a very particular set menu.  Viewers' immediate dislike of Edward will turn to outright revulsion during a disturbing scene towards the end of the episode when he returns home with his nubile daughter Louise after they have both celebrated her birthday with dinner at the Cafe Royal.  The young woman is thrown into appalled shock and confusion by his subsequent actions.

Quite apart from being a debauched, louche snob, Edward is also an anti-Semitic, racist, anti-intellectual who dismisses George Bernard Shaw as "an Irish, vegetarian, teetotal Commie.  Not my idea of fun."  And we are all familiar by now with Edward's idea of fun.

Inevitably, the first episode of any series, particularly one as packed with different characters and relationships as this one, will take time to get going, mainly because introductions and context-setting are bound to be fairly complicated.  Thus The Cazalets proceeds at a leisurely pace as we get to know the various personalites.

There is the impecunious Rupert, who refuses to compromise his need to be a painter by joining the family lumber business;  his selfish, silly wife Zoe;  the thoughtful Rachel, who finds the idea of "love with a man" disgusting and who furtively holds hands with close female friend Sid, who suggests that they have indeed found love without a man.  And the gentle Hugh Cazalet, who suffers persistent headaches due to wartime shrapnel lodged in his brain.

Friday 22 June, 2001, 21:00 to 22:00 BST

Drama series focusing on a family which is transformed by the tumultuous events of World War II. As the storm clouds of war gather over Europe in 1938, the Cazalet brothers and their families retreat to their parents' country home. Hugh remains scarred by the events of World War I, Edward is risking his marriage with a series of clandestine affairs, and Rupert's wife is growing impatient with his artistic lifestyle.

Friday 29 June, 2001, 21:00 to 22:00 BST

Second episode of this wartime family saga based on the books by Elizabeth Jane Howard. To be strictly accurate it’s not wartime yet but all the characters who have anything about them know that it’s coming and it’s casting a shadow over even their sheltered lives. Not that they’re all that sheltered either as tonight a pregnant Villy gets to meet her husband’s mistress. That’s got to hurt. And Zoe’s up for some problems, too.

Brig continues to prepare for the imminent war. A distraught Louise is careful to avoid her lecherous father. Villy is horrified to discover that she is pregnant, and seeks advice on abortion from the family doctor. And Zoe returns to London to nurse her mother after a heart attack, where she meets the handsome Dr Sherlock.

Friday 6 July, 2001, 21:00 to 22:00 BST

"Oh darling, war has broken out. Isn’t that perfectly beastly? We’ll all have to move to Sussex, where we can carry on our lives of perfect self-absorption while making blackout curtains." This isn’t actually a line of dialogue from the third episode of this lovely, perfect-end-to-the-week drama series, but it might as well be because even Hitler doesn’t get in the way of the Cazalet family’s peculiar selfishness.

The Cazalets has all the elements that make soaps so involving – the characters, the stories and the emotional attachment to their audience.

At this stage the war in Europe has not directly affected the family or the war within itself, but like having rats in the house, you know it’s there and that there is nothing you can do to stop it.

The family come to terms with new ways of life, such as the blackout, as war is officially declared. Zoe discovers that she is pregnant by Rupert, who joins the Navy. Edward's long-term affair with Diana continues. A seriously ill Sybil suffers in silence. Louise learns that she has won a place at drama school.

Friday 13 July, 2001, 21:00 to 22:00 BST

The Cazalets continues to be the treat of the week. By now, we have had time to get used to the minute attention to detail. The language, too, has become more familiar, so that exclamations such as "It’s really too tiresome. You can’t even have a little fun without those beastly Germans trying to spoil it" seem to have developed a naturalistic ring. One also knows by now that death, disease and sex are part of the package. But it is the sudden flashes of inspired acting that catch you unawares. Watch out tonight, for example, as Edward Cazalet (Stephen Dillane) reacts to his wife’s indignation down the telephone.  (The Times, Saturday, July 7, 2001)

The desperate realities of war at last hit the Cazalets hard and the family is reeling from last week’s awful news. They also have to contend with problems closer to home. Sybil is ill and her pallor so alarming that she blends into the hospital paintwork and bed linen. Soon she’ll need to wear an orange bed jacket so we can pick her out. And Villy is losing what little control she has over the headstrong Louise, who returns home from drama school wearing trousers and make-up to be denounced as a "tart" by her mother.

It’s all as lovely and languid as fans of the series have come to expect, and there is much fun to be had in counting just how many times everyone says “darling”.

Zoe is told of Rupert's disappearance after the birth of their baby, Juliet. Clary is distraught at the news and tracks the route she thinks her father will have taken through France. Sybil is treated for cancer in hospital. Christopher, Villy's sensitive nephew, comes to stay, in order to escape his authoritarian father.

Friday 20 July, 2001, 21:00 to 22:00 BST

There is still no news of Rupert, but Clary refuses to give up hope. Neville runs away to Ireland. Zoe forms a close friendship with an injured RAF officer, Roddy. Louise faces up to her lecherous father. Sybil's health takes another turn for the worse. Christopher refuses to join up and is eventually admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Friday 27 July, 2001, 21:00 to 22:00 BST

Oh darling, Friday nights just won't be the same without The Cazalets, which finishes tonight. And there are no plans for another series which is a truly wretched shame. So, Cazalets converts, make the most of what is left of this entertainingly arch drama series, an oasis of gentility and civility, which ties up a few of its loose ends tonight.

Christopher is sent to convalesce at Home Place. Diana tells Edward that she is expecting his baby. Zoe's friendship with Roddy grows. A visitor to Home Place has encouraging news of Rupert. Michael asks Louise to marry him, and she accepts. Sybil passes away peacefully.

Ananova 

Wednesday May 30, 2001

Joanna Lumley 'overwhelmed' by work making debut as producer

Joanna Lumley says she was overwhelmed by the work involved in producing a new BBC1 period drama.

The actress co-produced the six-hour saga The Cazalets.

She is best known for her roles in Absolutely Fabulous and The New Avengers.

Joanna says: "Acting is a doddle, a holiday compared to producing. I've never known so many things to have to be carried around in the head.

"We had 65 actors and it was like a phenomenal 3-D game of chess."

The £3 million drama was shot at Home Place in Surrey and Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire.

Joanna says she tried to buy the rights for the Elizabeth Jane Howard novels but discovered veteran programme-maker Verity Lambert, who has worked on Minder, Dr Who and The Naked Civil Servant, had bought them already.

"The same day I inquired about the TV rights, I discovered a message on my answer machine from Verity asking if I'd like to join her in making it," she says.

Joanna is full of praise for her co-producer, saying: "I couldn't believe how hard Verity works - having to get up at 5am and putting in 14 hours every day, without the satisfaction of having acted in the middle of it."

The duo first worked together on the ITV comedy Class Act in 1991 and then the BBC's A Rather English Marriage in 1998. Verity said: "We struck up a rapport."

The Cazalets is based on novels about three generations of a rich family in the '30s and '40s.

Set to screen next month, the cast is headed by ex-Brookie star John McArdle, Paul Rhys, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville, Stephen Dillane and Anastasia Hille.

Electronic Telegraph 

Sunday September 3, 2000

Lumley finds producing role for BBC 'absolutely fabulous'

by Oliver Poole

JOANNA LUMLEY is to step behind the camera for the first time to produce a £3 million television series for the BBC.

The actress is to make Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Cazalet Chronicle , a four-volume saga of a family living between 1937 and 1947. Miss Lumley said of her production debut: "It is utterly thrilling. It is a power thing I have got now. I just say 'Call me MGM'. I have been joking that shortly I shall have films written by me, starring me, with the music by me. But I'd better start somewhere more humble."

Filming starts this month on the five-part series which covers the first two books and will be screened by BBC1 next year. The final books will be filmed later for two future six-part series. Miss Howard spent seven years writing The Cazalet Chronicle, which traces the way a family and Britain was changed by the Second World War.

She began the books after the collapse of her 15-year marriage to the author Sir Kingsley Amis. Miss Lumley tried to buy the film rights after reading the books last year but discovered that they were already owned by Verity Lambert, the producer of Rumpole of the Bailey and the originator of the soap Eldorado.

Miss Lumley had worked with the Cinema Verity production company, which was founded by Miss Lambert, on the series Class Act. When Miss Howard's agent told Miss Lambert that the 54-year-old actress was interested in making the series it was suggested they work on it together.

Miss Lumley said: "She is the senior prefect and I just walk around behind her carrying a cloth to shine her shoes and listening and watching how she does things. I have been allowed to bunk off on the financial side. I had no idea producers needed to know things such as how many ladders the crew would need in a specific place. So I would say my input, if any, has been purely artistic."

This has included detailed discussion on the script, which was adapted for the series by Douglas Livingstone, and selecting the cast. Although Miss Lumley was asked also to act in the production she refused preferring to concentrate on her new behind the scenes role. She said that she had been inspired to produce by women such as Jennifer Saunders, with whom she worked on the comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, and Ruby Wax, the American comedienne.

Miss Lumley said: "Having been bought up in a slightly different generation where at dances you would sit modestly with your hands clasped in your lap, with your eyes lowered, waiting for someone to pick you, I saw these people who would get up and ask someone to dance. Rather than sit around waiting for the telephone to ring - which it does quite a lot - it is so much nicer to get the bit between your own teeth and drive something along."

Next she hopes to bring to the screen her first film script, a drama called Brightest and Best, about a school reunion she has written with the novelist Angela Lambert. Miss Lumley said: "If it is well received and taken up by someone like BBC or Channel 4, and they go, 'Here is a budget', then I could certainly play one of the parts in it or maybe even have a crack at directing. I love acting but the thrilling part of putting together something like The Cazalet Chronicle is that you make the pages come alive."

Stephen Dillane, who won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway play The Real Thing, plays Edward Cazalet and Lesley Manville, who played a lesbian teacher in the BBC's Real Women, his wife Millie. The actor Paul Rhys, who recently appeared in the much acclaimed ITV drama I Saw You, and Joanna Page, who was in the National Theatre's recent version of The Mysteries, will also star in the series.

Books

The Light Years

Marking Time

Confusion

The third volume of the Cazalets' family saga opens with Sybil's daughter Polly and Polly's cousin Clary, leaving Home Place for London, where Archie Lestrange, an old family friend keeps an eye on them -- too close an eye, for it leads to infatuation. Sybil was always stable and centered. Her death sets the children adrift -- and their lives show it -- in a sense mirroring the turmoil of war and its impact on everyone it touches. As confusion moves through the dark, middle days of the war to VE Day, the characters we have come to know, to love and admire find the turmoil of the times reflected in the chaos of their lives. The question remains, "Will war's end bring peace and tranquility to this family?"

Casting Off

CASTING OFF is the fourth and final volume of The Cazalet Chronicle. It is July 1945: VE Day is behind, Japan has yet to surrender. Polly, Clary and Louise -- girls on the brink of adolescence when the chronicle began in 1937 -- are now grown up. Painfully, they've discovered those things that adults never seemed to talk about: sexual passion, loneliness, and loss. Rupert Cazalet, missing in France for several years, returns to find his wife, Zoe, curiously withdrawn. Still contriving to juggle a wife and a mistress, Edward will be forced to choose between them, while Hugh, estranged from Edward after discovering his duplicity, must finally come to terms with Sybil's death. And what of Archie Lestrange? Drawn to the center of the Cazalets' untidy circle, he decides escape may be the only means of survival.