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.

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.