Get a load of that fancy-pants little box, the tube, and its pretentions to high culture.
This season, TV can lay claim to some powerful, passionate highbrow entertainment on a par with anything the big screen has to offer.
While PBS has been rivaled and sometimes eclipsed by a number of cable networks in the area of nature films, travelogues and news documentaries, on the high-end literary front, it still outranks the competition.
Upscale, literary TV is on tap for spring, starting this week:
“Tess of the d’Urberbvilles” premieres tonight and next Sunday (9 p.m. on KRMA-Channel 6), with Gemma Arterton (“Quantum of Solace”) in the title role as the dishonored heroine of Thomas Hardy’s classic romance.
A new “Wuthering Heights,” airing Jan. 18 and 25, is a marvelous retelling of Emily Bronte’s classic tale of all-consuming, twisted love. Heathcliff has never looked so good nor so demented as played by Tom Hardy; Catherine Earnshaw (Charlotte Riley) has never been so complicated, endearing and maddening. This production, thanks mostly to British hunk Hardy, has upped the sexuality quotient of the Bronte piece.
Later this spring, “Masterpiece Classic” launches a four-work Charles Dickens fest with a new three-hour adaptation of “Oliver Twist” Feb. 15-22. Timothy Spall portrays Fagin the cutpurse king, Tom Hardy plays Bill Sikes, Fagin’s accomplice, and Sophie Okonedo is Nancy.
A replay of “David Copperfield” will carry fans of the classics from March 15-22, featuring Bob Hoskins as Mr. Micawber, Maggie Smith as David’s upstanding Aunt Betsey, Ian McKellen as the sadistic schoolmaster Mr. Creakle, and Daniel Radcliffe as young David Copperfield.
That’s followed by a new eight-hour miniseries adaptation of “Little Doritt,” March 29-April 26, with the never- more-relevant theme of financial collapse. Debtor’s prison, swindling bankers … it’s all scandalously close to our modern-day headlines. Matthew Macfadyen (“Pride and Prejudice”) stars as Arthur Clennam, with Clair Foy as Amy “Little” Dorrit and Tom Courtenay as her father.
Wrapping this year’s Dickens collection on May 3, Sophie Vavasseur portrays Little Nell Trent in a 90-minute adaptation of “Old Curiosity Shop.”
On the musical side, PBS has “Cyrano” (with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner reprising their roles from the Broadway show) on “Great Performances,” on Jan. 7. Oscar and Tony winner Kline won kudos for his performance of Cyrano de Bergerac.
And ” ‘Chess’ in Concert,” the two-night event performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall last year, will turn up on PBS this spring, starring Tony winner Idina Mendel (“Wicked”).
In the Shakespeare department, “Great Performances” delivers the recent Royal Shakespeare Company production of “King Lear” on March 25 with Sir Ian McKellen in the role.
Last, not least (speaking of “Lear”), the talk of the last PBS press conference with TV critics was whether Mc Kellen’s performance, which included full frontal nudity, would be edited out of the televised version. PBS hedged.
There’s bound to be more back and forth on that topic, and controversy over the idea of editing or censoring fine art, coming soon. Will PBS cave in light of recent pressures from the Federal Communications Commission? Or will they let Lear be Lear?
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
