Television Reviews : ‘Passion Spent’ Leisurely Look at a British Widow

Though the author of several novels, Victoria Sackville-West has probably been better known since her death in 1962 as the husband of diplomat/journalist Harold Nicolson, the subject of their son Nigel’s “Portrait of a Marriage,” a close friend of Virginia Woolf’s and an expert gardener. “Masterpiece Theater’s” three-part adaptation of her 1932 work “All Passion Spent” does not seem to have many qualities that would help correct that view, but it is not without interest and small pleasures.

With Wendy Hiller in the lead role, the drama begins Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channels 50 and 24, and at 9 p.m. on Channel 15. It starts the following week, Jan. 29, on KCET Channel 28.

Upon her the death of her husband, an ex-Prime Minister, 85-year-old Lady Slane (Hiller) upsets her 60-ish children by choosing to live on her own rather than with any of them, and once she does so she is visited by a man who loved her 50 years before.

That basically sums up the plot, which leaves spacious room for long conversations, a long look at the new house and so on. Too much room, unless one becomes entranced by the charms of a typically fine performance by the leading lady and a classy production (except for some annoyingly buoyant music and frequently atrocious sound recording/mixing).

Of course, there was an inherent problem in filming a novel about a person in whom all passion is pretty much spent, and producer Colin Rogers (“A Perfect Spy”) is to be applauded for not trying to jazz things up inappropriately. “All Passion Spent,” however, might have worked better in more condensed fashion.