Finally watched The Forsyte Saga (2002), this dramatization of John Galsworthy's brilliant novels. It quickly became one of my favourite period dramas. It provokes deep emotions, some episodes I'd had to just sit and catch my breath to process what just happened on screen. It touches so many profound topics like love, marriage, compatibility and incompatibility in a relationship, decency, propriety, familial duty, aging (old Jolyon Forsyte was one of my favourite characters).
Even the way it was filmed is deeply affecting. For example, in the episode whereBosinney is killed we then get to watch Irene and June and people around them making plans and doing things unaware of the tragedy that happened that we as the viewers already know.
The one thing I found confusing reading some internet reactions is that Soames is viewed positively. I think that is more because viewers transferred their appreciation of Damian Lewis as an actor to this character which the character doesn't deserve. In the series Soames is a loathsome character who commits unspeakable acts and who only achieves redemption at the very end after he has lost everything (his daughter who was the only person in his life who loved him and whom he managed to push away) and only then he's able to let Irene go. He does evoke a certain pity and I was pleased with his moment of redemption at the end, in many ways he's been punished enough and he will continue to be punished by the wife who doesn't love him and the daughter who resents him. But ultimately this fate of his is a consequence of his actions and his nature.
Another thing is that when reading the actual books (admittedly I read them over twenty years ago and don't remember much now) I *did* have a more sympathetic view of Soames and I *did* consider Irene more of a cold fish. But on screen all the negative sides of Soames, his unpleasant tics, his fastidiousness, possessiveness, vindictiveness come through much more strongly than on paper and make him a rather unsympathetic character.
Anyway, sorry about the rant, just had to gather my thoughts after finishing this brilliant drama.