FACETS OF THE ‘JEWEL’ IN TV’S CROWN

What happens when you unsex a nation, treat it like a nation of eunuchs? Because that’s what we’ve done, isn’t it?

--Daphne Manners in “The Raj Quartet”

I was sitting at my desk Monday when a copy editor came by and asked, “So?” I knew what he wanted to talk about: Sunday’s episode of “The Jewel in the Crown,” a brilliant miniseries about the turbulent last five years of the British Raj (rule) in India.

Yes, it’s historically and socially meaningful. Yes, it’s magnificently staged, directed and performed. And yes, it’s intriguingly, irresistibly told. But there’s something even more rare about this “Masterpiece Theatre” rendering, this jewel in the PBS schedule.

It’s TV that people talk about.

“The Thorn Birds,” even as a current rerun on ABC, is still watched in far greater numbers. But there is nothing in “The Thorn Birds” to talk about beyond steamy love. In “The Jewel in the Crown”--a 14-part adaptation of Paul Scott’s four novels (collectively titled “The Raj Quartet”) by Britain’s Granada TV--there is everything to talk about.

We’re experiencing a sort of Raj revival, glorified on American TV by last season’s “The Far Pavilions,” Home Box Office’s strikingly comical costume epic memorable only for Amy Irving’s raccoon eyes. Enough said about that.

What people want to compare “The Jewel in the Crown” with is David Lean’s celebrated adaptation of E. M. Forster’s “A Passage to India,” a cinch Oscar nominee that has been named 1984’s best film by the New York film critics.

But get serious. My vote goes for “The Jewel in the Crown,” which ends with the English withdrawal from India in 1947.

“A Passage to India” has the advantage of the big screen and Lean’s mastery of detail and panorama. It is visually exquisite, dramatizing the smallness of man against the forces of his physical environment. I’m told that its deeply mystical quality, revolving around an ambiguous incident in the Marabar Caves, is true to Forster’s book, which I haven’t read.

Although set in periods two decades apart, both the film and the TV miniseriess touch upon similar themes: British empire building and decadence, the white master’s oppression of the dark-skinned slave in the guise of benevolent patriarchy.

But “The Jewel in the Crown,” heroically adapted for TV by Ken Taylor and co-directed by producer Christopher Morahan and Jim O’Brien, has the storytelling advantage of any serial. It is five times longer than “A Passage to India,” allowing for broader scope and character development and more detailed, complex relationships in a politically, socially and religiously eclectic land. It gives us insight into pre-independence India by revealing the minds of the British occupiers.

There is just so much . . . more .

And people want to talk about it. They want to talk about Hari Kumar (Art Malik), the self-hating Indian falsely accused of raping his English lover, Daphne Manners (Susan Wool-dridge) and unjustly imprisoned for political reasons. Does he return?

They want to talk about Ronald Merrick (Tim Pigott-Smith), the racist British policeman-turned-army officer who is the story’s pivotal character and a metaphor for all that is evil in “The Jewel in the Crown.” How will the resentful, working-class Merrick be able to survive and even flourish in the more upper-crust British class establishment that seems to despise him? Will his Indian victims ultimately turn the tables?

People want to talk about the performances and the direction. The acting ranges mostly from impeccable to brilliant, and even actors with fleeting lives in the story create vivid, enduring impressions. Pigott-Smith is awesome, delivering such extraordinary intensity and dimension as Merrick that at times you want to reach through the screen and throttle him. Malik, who is rather gray as a young jurist in “A Passage to India,” just sizzles as Kumar. As protagonists, Pigott-Smith and Malik are electrifying together.

And Dame Peggy Ashcroft, said to be a sure Oscar nominee for her work as Mrs. Moore in “A Passage to India,” is even better in “The Jewel in the Crown” as the idealistic retired missionary schoolteacher, Barbie Batchelor. She has some scenes coming up with Fabia Drake, as Mabel Layton, and Judy Parfitt, as Mildred Layton, that just put you away.

People want to talk about all the characters, who never seem to follow TV form, yet are true to themselves. Daphne is a relatively enlightened Englishwoman, who falls in love with an Indian yet remains a prisoner of her upbringing, remarking about the Indian rabble who raped her: “They all look alike.”

Sarah Layton (Geraldine James) is especially ambiguous, an unlikely romantic heroine, it would seem, in demand by men less for her earthy looks and ample figure than for her decency and intelligence. She, too, is a product of her roots.

Scott’s characters are layered. Like all of us, they are the sum of conflicting qualities. Look at Merrick, the story’s true villain, a driven man of demented brutality and sadism, but one whose personal courage and occasional softness ultimately win him some respect and even affection.

People want to talk about the story, whose sharp twists are not always easy to follow. Scott makes us work, taking us on a winding course. He is never predictable. The expected seldom materializes.

Accustomed to traditional TV’s tidy endings, I found the conclusion of “The Jewel in the Crown” a letdown, dramatically unsatisfying and incomplete, a comma instead of an exclamation mark. Yet in thinking about it--and you do think a lot about “The Jewel in the Crown”--I decided that it was the truest way to end the story.

Anyway, a story that lingers in your mind never ends. Does it?