Making Daniel Deronda palatable

I seem to be stuck half-way in several TV series at once at the moment. "West Wing" season one - because I've seen it too many times and am starting to pick holes in the manipulative (if funny) argumentation. "Fame" season two - because the next episode is apparently another Disability Issue Episode (Wilkie Collins could have taught the preachy script-writers a thing or two). An old adaptation of "The Woman in White", which there is nothing wrong with really, only sometimes you want to watch something with a bit more pep. I haven't even started with "Lorna Doone" which I've borrowed from my parents, despite the blurb's promise of "one of the worst villains of all time".

One TV series I have managed to finish watching, though, is the 2002 adaptation of George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda". The adapter is Andrew Davies, and he shows yet again why he is the king of classic costume drama here. He has a trick of making potentially problematic characters just that little bit more bearable. You would not have thought from the "Middlemarch" adaptation that Will Ladislaw in the book is a self-centred, immature, preening, spectacularly ungrateful pain in the neck. Scenes wisely cut from the TV version include the one where he glumly reflects that he might as well sleep with Rosamond (the wife of one of his friends, let's not forget) because he has lost everything anyway and he was kind of mean to her; the one where he visits Casaubon's church just to spite him; and the one where he makes Bulstrode cry (true, that whole subplot was cut, but I suspect it wasn't only for simplification reasons - I doubt even Rufus Sewell would have looked good pouring scorn over Peter Jeffrey's tormented banker). As I've commented on earlier, Darcy owes much of his popularity to the treatment Davies gives him in the "P&P" adaptation - for instance, the scene where Darcy apologises to Bingley for interfering in his love life is added by Davies and does much to reconcile us with the way he treated Jane. In "Daniel Deronda", it is Deronda himself who gets the Andrew Davies makeover.

And my goodness he needs it. In the irritating hero department he outshines Will Ladislaw by far. I actually saw the "Daniel Deronda" adaptation for the first time before I've read the book, and I realise I may have been influenced by Romola Garai's five-star performance as Gwendolen Harleth when reading it, but I remember being squarely on Gwendolen's side throughout, and wondering what a woman like her - so human and complex - saw in the smug, self-regarding twerp Deronda. What, he teach her about morals? He who won't tell Mirah, the other woman in his life (who can't hold a candle to Gwendolen) when he thinks he has found her long-lost family, because he finds them common? He who is angry with his kind and loving guardian Sir Hugo Mallinger when he finds out about his real descent, although he generously decides to forgive Sir Hugo for bringing him up as his own son in the lap of luxury? And on the basis of what pearls of wisdom does Gwendolen consider Deronda worthy of being her moral compass? Why, because he disapproves of gambling because the gambler's gain "is another's loss". There are many good arguments, both ethical and commonsensical, against gambling, but this is surely not one of them. Yes, a gambler's winnings have once belonged to losers at the gaming-table, but they have passed through the hands of the gambling-house's bank after that, and if no-one had won they would have stayed there. The "another" whose loss one is supposed to condole is in fact the gambling-house. Well, boo-hoo.

Tha adaptation does include the gambling gaffe (though softened and reluctantly uttered) and Deronda's unfathomable objection to the kind-hearted Cohens, who luckily for him turn out not to be Mirah's family after all. But otherwise, the protagonist comes across more as Gwendolen's best friend than a pontificating moralist. He is always giving her pep talks, saying things like "you musn't think that" when she starts blaming herself. Also, he keeps looking as if he very much wanted to kiss her, which is not what a moral compass is supposed to do. Deronda is played by the good-looking Hugh Dancy, who spends most of the series seeming very upset rather than superior. It worked well when he played David Copperfield in the Hallmark adaptation of that novel, and it works rather well here as well. Though you still don't understand what makes Daniel Deronda so special that two very attractive women should come close to an unladylike cat-fight about him.

Davies has pruned well in other respects too - for instance, the part of Mordecai has been so ruthlessly cut that he actually appears to be intense and charismatic rather than a perfect bore. But all credit should not go to Davies. The adaptation is well-directed and extremely well-cast. Jodhi May lends such warmth to Mirah that you can almost accept that she's Deronda's True Love, and Hugh Bonneville shines in the role of chilling sadist Mallinger Grandcourt. His range is impressive - he has played Charles Bovary and other decent sorts just as convincingly.

What I also like about this adaptation - and here I'm back to Davies-gushing - is the fact that there is a small but vital scene which I can't remember being in the book. Deronda comes across Mirah praying, is awed by her piety and confesses he has never felt very pious, and that he envies her. In the novel, I was bothered by the fact that Deronda just shrugged of Christianity like an old coat, and no-one even appeared shocked by it. Also, his fascination with Judaism seemed to have more to do with its rich culture and with his regard for persons such as Mirah and Mordecai than with any religious aspects. The prayer scene adds a needed religious dimension to what is after all the story of a man's conversion - rather, it is hinted here, from indifference to Judaism than from Christianity to Judaism.