The Golden Bowl

If you find reading Henry James tedious for his endlessly spun-out and inconsequential sentences, you need not fear. This production is subtly habit-forming throughout its inveigling four episodes. Especially, as other reviewers have commented, for everything that is not said in the text. Perhaps not too sinister, by contemporary standards, it nevertheless treats infidelity, not simply as an extracurricular activity for the lazy rich, but also as a labyrinth of quiet deceptions and undercurrents running through 19th century propriety, presented in a suave and 'delicate' manner. I watched all the episodes several times, sometimes twice in one evening. You too, perhaps, when you 'get caught' by the disquieting and ominous dialogues wafting from scene to scene.