Davies' Adaptation of Line of Beauty Turns Up "Sex and Humour"

"I defer to no heterosexual in my admiration of Henry James nor to any critic of any orientation in my appreciation of the veteran screenwriter Andrew Davies. The idea, however, of Davies getting his mitts on, say, The Portrait of a Lady makes my palms sweat even as I type the words. His method as an adaptor of classic literature is journalistic: first simplify, then exaggerate, usually by turning up the volume on the sex and the humour. It tends to work a treat. But not, please, on the filigree prose of Henry James. Fortunately, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst is not a Jamesian work; it just thinks that it is." (Andrew Billen for The New Statesman)

The BBC website for the miniseries is here. --Kim