Vonnie, was it you mentioned that the Beeb was doing/has done a Bleak House adaptation? Probably that is not on DVD yet. But I have had good luck with seeing 19th C. novels on TV, and then reading them and enjoying them. Somehow, knowing the plot in advance, and in visual terms, can help reinforce a narrative throughline when the prose is busy meandering.

I have a number of obscure/art house movies in the queue, and am trying to leaven them with things that are fun, but not Will Ferrell-type. There is only so much French black-and-white dystopia I can take at one time.

I've been doing quite a bit of old BBC minis.

Have you seen The Pallisers? (I might've asked this already.) I'm trying to decide if JZ needs it. She's a huge Trollope fan.

My British boss went on and on about a BBC series called "The Palaces" before I figured her out.

We will not speak of the Korea Development Office fiasco.

Vonnie, was it you mentioned that the Beeb was doing/has done a Bleak House adaptation? Probably that is not on DVD yet.

They've done 3 -- 1959, 1985, and 2005. I don't think any have been released in the States, though.

Have you seen The Pallisers?

I have, though it was 8-10 years ago. Captures the feel of the books well. Probably a little better than the mini of The Way We Live Now from a couple years ago. But either would be a good choice.

How long was The Pallisers? The longer it was, the more I'll like it; the whole series is just too many very, very long novels to be properly suited to anything less than, at bare minimum, a 5-hour series. IMO, anyway.

So much of Trollope's great value is in the small household details, the inner monologues and sidelong glances and brief dialogues, often between minor characters, that do almost nothing to advance the plot (which he considered his weak point as a writer) but illuminate the characters' inner lives and the rhythms of their daily lives, their connections to their parents and children, their marriages in all the long years after the big Victorian wedding. Start cutting for length, and pretty soon all you're left with is the skeleton of the plot. And Trollope's skeletons are kind of small and misshapen. All the fun is in the meat he puts on those bones.

In bookstores you'll every now and then come across copies of the "novelization" of the PBS series -- all the several thousand pages of meat stripped away and 500 cracked, dry, marrowless little pages of plot remaining. It's an abomination.

::looks at feet::

Huh. How on earth did that soapbox get there?

The longer it was, the more I'll like it; the whole series is just too many very, very long novels to be properly suited to anything less than, at bare minimum, a 5-hour series.

Definitely more than 5. I want to say it was 12 hours, but I may be off there.

And I like the way you describe the virtues of Trollope. Case in point -- The Prime Minister. Which begins with the parties forming a coalition government. The government is then pretty much forgotten, except as an excuse for the Duchess to throw lavish entertainments.

Definitely more than 5. I want to say it was 12 hours, but I may be off there.

It's in three complete box sets. So I think it might be more than 12.

Probably my faulty memory, then. I just remember that a co-worker loaned me about 6 videocassettes.

Heh, thanks, but I'm pretty much just spouting the Trollope fannish party line. He cheerfully copped to being a shitty plotter -- could not for the life of him do what Dickens did with the elaborate stories within stories within stories, the ability to keep six or seven subplots not only going simultaneously but weaving neatly in and out of one another, and the frequently occurring but rarely asspully HSQ.

Trollope focused instead on small human fuck-ups: the inappropriate crush you can't quite smother, the secret agonies of doubt, the words you want to take back even as they're sailing out your mouth, the quiet resentment, the pride you choke on, the badly mistaken promise you feel honor-bound to keep, with occasional forays into the deeper waters of disintegrating marriages and custody battles and what goes on in the mind of an upright, properly reared, very straitlaced person of name and money who commits violence against another human. He really couldn't plot, but he loved humans and their fucked-up, brave and foolish spicy brains and he was so very good at writing them down.