Word: jeweller
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...humble genius of Jewel to look beyond this surface and settle on silences, interstices, uneasy moments between engagements. Forswearing the familiar group portrait of the raj in formal poses, it presents snapshots of disoriented individuals, alone and often at loose ends...
...sterling cast handles nearly all of Jewel's haunted souls with understated urgency. As the gawky Daphne, Wooldridge is a particular marvel. Eyes wide and full of a startled innocence, she galumphs through life with such sweet diffidence that plainness itself seems radiant. An equally luminous pathos surrounds Dame Peggy Ashcroft's Barbie Batchelor, a sad little figure of baffled devotion who has little to do save muddle through her final days "very tired and old and far from home...
...initiators of the series, Britain's Granada Television, approached the adaptation of Jewel with a method that seemed like madness. Half of the episodes were directed by Television Veteran Christopher Morahan, 55 (Uncle Vanya, Old Times), the other half by Jim O'Brien, 37, who has directed a number of documentaries and theatrical productions. In addition, the film makers decided to brave four months' shooting on location in India, an adventure that involved wrangling 300 containers of equipment past vigilant customs officers, recruiting local beggars to act as extras and running up a tab of $7 million...
...surprisingly, the series has inherited some of the book's shortcomings. As leisurely and sinuous in its flow as the Ganges, sometimes crashing through rapids, more often meandering into tributaries, Jewel does on occasion get bogged down in its own complexities. In the middle episodes, when the action closes in on Layton and four other mem-sahibs, the show could be mistaken for a provincial soap opera, and a brackish one at that. Sometimes too it parades a kind of sincerity that teeters on melodrama. Symbols are spelled out, symmetries underlined, characters displayed with embarrassing nakedness. Merrick never tires...
...Britain earlier this year, Jewel became a fashionable rage and a national addiction. Each week it held 8 million viewers hostage; it sparked a revisionist debate in the press about imperial guilt and glory; and, in the end, it was almost unanimously acclaimed. Jewel's subject may seem more distant to American viewers. But they would be well advised to set aside their Sunday evenings for the next three months to follow this uncommonly rewarding series. There could be no truer memorial to Scott's quiet masterpiece and no grander elegy to the ambiguous power of the Empire...