Gormenghast

Fantasy, Mystery

Celia Imrie	Lady Gertrude
John Sessions	Dr. Prunesquallor
Warren Mitchell
George Yiasoumi
Ian Richardson	Lord Groan
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers	Steerpike
Christopher Lee	Flay
Neve McIntosh	Lady Fuchsia
Andrew Robertson	Titus (17)
Cameron Powrie	Titus (12)
Fiona Shaw	Irma Prunesquallor
Richard Griffiths	Swelter

Director	Andy Wilson (IV); Andy Wilson
Producer	Estelle Daniel
Writer	Malcolm McKay; Mervyn Peake

The BBC's lavish, glowingly designed adapation of Mervyn Peake's eccentrically brilliant novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast is a triumph of casting. Ian Richardson's Lear-like depiction of the mad earl of a remote, vast, ritual-obsessed building is matched by the brutal pragmatism of Celia Imrie as his wife, the synchronised madness of Zoe Wanamaker and Lynsey Baxter as his twin sisters and the duplicitous charm of Jonathan Rhys-Meyer as Steerpike, the kitchen-boy determined to take over no matter how many deaths it costs. John Sessions is surprisingly touching as Prunesquallor, the family doctor who realises almost too late what Steerpike intends.

It is always tricky to film a book dear to the hearts of its admirers: Wilson and his design team achieve a look rather more pre-Raphaelite than Peake's own illustrations, shabby velvets, garish sunlight and dank stone passages. The score by Richard Rodney Bennett is full of attractive surprises--fanfares and waltzes and apotheoses--and John Tavener's choral additions are plausibly parts of the immemorial ritual of Gormenghast.

On the DVD: The double DVD comes with scene selection, an informative half-hour documentary on the making of the serial and a slide gallery of costume designs, characters and their dooms. --Roz Kaveney