The Choir

"The Choir" is a lovely mini-series (5 episodes) about the survival of a cathedral' school choir, with a top-notch cast that makes it all too believable how local politics in church and council alike can be poisonous to the extreme. James Fox, David Warner, Cathryn Harrison, John Standing, and Anthony Way (in real life a famous boy treble in his days) and a host of others deliver the goods and it's certainly fun to watch..

It is a solid-made series but with a dangerous high level of soap (especially the last episode). I could forgive this all were it not for the music. Or rather, lack of it.

It is a bitter irony that Gloucester Cathedral provided the magnificent backbone of the series, and when the choir sings you remember that England has indeed a very rich and very long choir tradition. But the overall background music of the series - in which music does play an important role! - is a general let-down. The composer, Stanislas Syrewicz, does know his stuff, but here we're invited to join the worst of pompous Victoriana 19th century music sounding a bit like Vaughan Williams on a very bad day, topped with a 'Panis Angelicum' which was sung by an angel, sure, but the bread was stale and it all sounded like an over the top orchestration by Stokowski.

For a mini-series involved in so much music that's a real let-down.

A large cast of experienced actors do their best to breathe reality into this at times melodramatic and sentimental account of the fight to save an English Cathedral choir from the machinations of the wicked Dean, based on a Joanna Trollope novel. The adaptation (by her sometime husband Ian Curteis) is competent, and allows all characters to spread their wings. Filmed at Gloucester Cathedral, so there is physical verisimilitude. The scenes of interpersonal relations and stress are perhaps more convincing than the clerical politics. The music is good but as so often in literary adaptations, over-insistent; and the direction is at times somewhat florid. So, worth seeing or revisiting provided you manage your expectations.

Fine acting by veteran cast of David Warner, Jane Asher, and, especially, James Fox, as the Machiavellian Dean. Nicholas Farrel is also good as the choirmaster, and Cathryn Harrison is excellent as a woman coming into herself as a person (after the departure of her uncommunicative husband), while trying to protect her prodigy son without holding him back. Harrison, Rex's granddaughter, is also a natural beauty.

This was an outstanding British series with a complex set of interactions between factions within a cathedral town. The cast includes a fantastic group of many well-known British actors and actresses, including Nicholas Pennell, Peter Vaughn, James Fox, etc. This show has so much going for it, I can't believe the powers that be have yet to make this available as a DVD release. I'm assuming this is a BBC show, but not sure. If so, it figures that they haven't yet released it. They are still sitting around with many other shows I've waited over a decade for, such as the superb Josephine Tey drama, th3 1986 Brat Farrar, or the 1982 TV movie version of Agatha Christie's Spider's Web, starring Penelope Keith. Please please make this available for sale!!!!!