Fri 26 Jun 2015
A British TV Mini-Series Review: PAINTED LADY (1997).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[6] Comments
PAINTED LADY. Joint production of Granada Television (UK) and PBS (US). Broadcast in the UK, December 1997. Two-part mini-series, approximately 3 1/2 hours without commercials. Broadcast in US on Masterpiece Theatre, April-May 1998. Helen Mirren, Iain Glen, Franco Nero, Michael Maloney, Lesley Manville, Iain Cuthbertson, Barry Barnes, Michael Liebmann, John Kavanagh. Writer: Allan Cubitt. Director: Julian Jarrold.
From what I’ve read about this particular production, this was designed to be a showcase for Helen Mirren’s acting talents after she’d finished five years of playing DCI/Supt. Jane Tennison on Prime Suspect.
And display them she does, with Mirren first appearing as Maggie Sullivan, a more-or-less involuntarily retired folk-rock singer staying in Ireland in the lodge house of her benefactor, Charles Stafford, then after his murder, transforming herself into a (supposedly) wealthy Polish countess Magdelena Kreschinskaá in order to enter the fast-paced world of fine art in London.
Her objective: to track down the only painting that was stolen in the aborted robbery that turned tragically to Stafford’s death. Supporting her with the funds to begin the masquerade are her half-sister and her husband, both notables in London’s art circles, and agreeing to her plan only with amusing doubts. Her purpose: to obtain the money Stafford’s son owes a local Irish gangster, and the reason the robbery was staged in the first place.
The actors, the photography and the setting are all top notch — a statement that includes Franco Nero as a Italian art dealer whose path crosses that of the countess in more ways than one — a fact that accounts for the rave reviews this TV mini-series has gained from most, but not all sources.
And therein I also am in the minority. Those of us who prefer stories that make sense, that aren’t wrapped up in five minutes at the end after watching a slow and deliberately paced work of television for well over three hours, and yes, dare I say it, more bloody violence than I expected to see in a very elegant tale of high art and sophisticated people.
The latter could be forgiven, though, if some effort had been into making a coherent whole out of a lot of very nice pieces, and I do mean mean nice. Some scenes are extremely well done. I wish I could be more positive about this, but in all honesty, I can’t.
June 27th, 2015 at 6:21 am
Until I read your recap I’d totally forgotten the existence of this one and would have sworn I’d never heard of it, let alone watched it. Yet I definitely did let it wash over me at the time, even though it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense and was forgotten almost as soon as it was over. I’m glad to see it wasn’t just me who didn’t really get it.
June 27th, 2015 at 1:20 pm
And here I thought that Helen Mirren could do no wrong.
June 27th, 2015 at 1:55 pm
This one seems to have been a project built for her all the way. The fine print on IMDb lists her as an associate producer. I wrote this review sometime last winter, and when I finally got around to posting it yesterday, I could not find an image to use that she was not in.
As a totally irrelevant side note, it is difficult to believe that 1997 was 18 years ago. Seems like yesterday to me.
June 27th, 2015 at 4:57 pm
Last night I watched her in a 1978 film of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” Time flies.
June 27th, 2015 at 6:47 pm
I think this was designed to showcase her and not the plot, though I had a deal more patience with it than any of you.
June 27th, 2015 at 7:32 pm
Her bio on Wikipedia barely mentions Painted Lady, but she has done so much it hardly matters. Anyway she was born in 1945 so when she played Rosalind in “As You Like It” she would have been in her early 30s (she looked younger).