The Pallisers

Gentle reader, you will here find all my Palliser film studies in the order the films occur in the famous 1974 BBC film series. I have also written up some of the material as an essay, originally called "Trollope on Television: Intertextuality in the Pallisers and other Trollope films;" it appears in Victorian Literture and Film Adaptation, edd. Abigail Burnham Bloom and Mary Sanders Pollock (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2011):155-80. The volume has been review by Kamilla Elliot for Review 19; I responded to Elliot's praise and strictures in my Ellen and Jim Have a Blog, Two: In which I respond to Kamilla Elliot's review of Victorian Literature and Film Adaptation.

The Duchess of Omnium (Susan Hampshire) and Mrs Finn (Barbara Murray), the two friends, 10:20


  • Preface
    1. The Pallisers Film Cycle: A Masterpiece of Televisual Classic Novel Film Adaptation
    2. The allure of green thoughts: classic book film adaptations
    3. The aesthetics of soap operas [explained] and defended
    4. The 1974 Palliser films: A Final Thumbnail Outline
    5. A Filmography of Adaptations of Trollope's novels; a proposal to create interest in Trollope
  • Small House at Allington and Can You Forgive Her into Phineas Finn (Pallisers 1:1 - 3:6)
    1. Simon Raven's _Pallisers_ 1:1: The Coerced Match
    2. Pallisers 1:1-2: Coercion and Pursuit
    3. Pallisers 1:2: How can people fulfill themselves?
    4. Burgo and the female beggar
    5. Pallisers 2:3: The Splendors & Miseries of Courtesans
    6. Pallisers 2:3: Alice reading, window-seat, Matching Priory
    7. Pallisers 2:4: The Crisis and a Choice Made
    8. A revised concise summary of the Palliser films, 1:1-2:4
    9. The Pallisers, 3:5: The back story about male outcasts
    10. Pallisers 3:5: The morning after (Pallisers at breakfast) (1)
    11. Pallisers 3:5: A day or so later (Breakfast & St Bungay comes to call) (2)
    12. Pallisers 3:5: Jane & George & Cora & Alice
    13. The 1974 Pallisers -- 4 novels & 3 novellas
    14. Pallisers: 3:6: The story horizon is reconfigured
  • Phineas Finn into The Eustace Diamonds (Pallisers 4:7 - 6:11)
    1. Pallisers 4:7: The Beginner (Phineas Finn) (1)
    2. The Pallisers, 4:7: The Beginner (Phineas Finn) (2)
    3. Pallisers 4:8: In the thick of life, politics & marriage: Phineas & Laura (Thematic summary) (1)
    4. Pallisers 4:8: In the thick of life, politics & marriage: Phineas v Laura (Summary of Episodes) (2)
    5. Pallisers, 5:9: "Time is pressing us very hard, Mr Finn" (1)
    6. Pallisers 5:9: Strained and Broken Relationships (2)
    7. Pallisers 5:9: Life an artificial hardball tragic game; Raven's vision combines with Trollope's (3)
    8. Pallisers 5:10: A Double Life
    9. The ending of Pallisers 5:10 an ironic climax to the ending of 1:1, & the emergence of Madame Max
    10. Pallisers 5:10: The Introduction of Lord Fawn
    11. Pallisers 6:11: the Lizzie Eustace & Lord Fawn matter begins
    12. Raven's Pallisers 6:11 compared to Trollope's Phineas Finn and Redux: Lady Laura Kennedy
    13. The Pallisers, 6:11: Sex, Babies and Pressure
    14. Pallisers 6:11: Change of mood to satire; how to erase even proto-feminism
  • The Eustace Diamonds Sandwiched inbetween Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux (Pallisers 6:12 - 7:14)
    1. Pallisers 6:12: Discords I
    2. Pallisers 6:12: Isolated People Herding Together; Lonely Friends (2)
    3. Pallisers 6:12: Compromise and Resignation (3)
    4. 1974 Pallisers: A thumbnail outline thus far
    5. Pallisers 7:13: Phineas and Mary, the penultimate scene from the marriage
    6. Pallisers 7:13: The Lizzie matter: the hollow spoiled child-woman
    7. Pallisers 7:13: The Duke versus Phineas
    8. Pallisers 7:14: Another transition: rejection, 2 transcripts (1)
    9. Pallisers 7:14: Abandonment and male obduracy, 2 transcripts (2)
    10. Pallisers 7:14: our natural business lies in escaping; how world and time separates people, 2 transcripts (3)
    11. Pallisers 7:14: The world as moral vaccuum;and the extreme difficult of re-entry
  • Phineas Redux into The Prime Minister (Pallisers 8:15 - 9:19)
    1. Pallisers 8:15: Mourning and aging, political thought in _Phineas Redux_ (1)
    2. Mid-point: remembering how they were (2)
    3. Pallisers 8:15: The new Duke and Duchess, Marie Goesler and Phineas at risk (3)
    4. Pallisers 8:16: A transition within the Phineas matter starring Bonteen
    5. Pallisers 8:16: Insider politics, gut instinct, its drive and blindnesses (1)
    6. Pallisers 8:16: we go to a lovely park & witness insider politics: tricks and pressure (2)
    7. Pallisers 8:16: Two scenes: wherein we spend time in front of a mirror and learn the tables of Duchesses are treacherous places
    8. The Palliser family romance begins in earnest; a significant departure from Phineas Redux (1)
    9. Pallisers 8:17: The array of male types across the series; the vexed nature of life potentially more dangerous than it appears (2)
    10. Pallisers 8:17: The story horizon opens out perceptibly (3)
    11. Pallisers 8:17: The murder and Phineas "taken in"; presentation of women & romance takes a dark turn in series (4)
    12. Pallisers 9:18-10:20, Summary of Parts and Themes, with Transcripts of especially good Scenes
  • The Prime Minister into The Duke's Children (Pallisers 10:20 - 12-24)
    1. Pallisers 9:18-10:20, Summary of Parts and Themes, with Transcripts of especially good Scenes
    2. Pallisers 10:21: Lady Rosina de Courcy: “Into the Woods” we go for companionship & refuge
    3. Pallisers 10:21: The Duke and Duchess in high conflict against backdrop of corrupt world
    4. Pallisers 11:22: The difficulties of marriage, three transcripts, with a little about Venice
    5. Pallisers 11:23: The end of Lopez: mockery of marital sex, despair, suicide yet keeping faith as he understood it
    6. Pallisers: 12:24: An Elegiac Culmination: Life has not many things better than this …. and Sudeley Castle
    7. Pallisers 12:24: Costume Drama: The elegiac mode; the function of friendship
  • The Duke's Children and a Retrospective (12:24 - 12:26)
    1. We are reading an abridged Duke's Children! -- an unknown Trollope novel
    2. Pallisers 12:24: Almost there (for our heroes & heroines too); the next generation
    3. Pallisers 12:25: The duchess, our heroine’s dying begins; why her daughter and Silverbridge’s fates mean so much to her
    4. Pallisers 12:25: The Duke and his son; parents and their adult children
    5. Pallisers 12:26: How the Duchess died and her story was righted in Mary’s apparent destiny
    6. Pallisers 12:26 and the whole series: Retrospective
  • Separate topics across the series
    1. Trollope as political novelist; the 1974 Pallisers as political films
    2. Costume Dramas: Why beloved
    3. Interlude: A Trollopian Sunday Afternoon
    4. Les Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, Beauchamp's Career, and The American Senator: Intertextuality in the Palliser films
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    Page Last Updated: 27 August 2010.