Barchester Towers (1982)

I have an unswerving adoration for BBC dramas, and I am working on seeing quite a few of them this year--both old and new. This one is an adaptation of an Anthony Trollope story, published in the mid nineteenth century, by the same name. The basic story is this. Barchester Towers concerns the leading citizens of the imaginary cathedral city of Barchester in England, as well as the rising tension between this High Church and Evangelicals. The story begins with a scandal involving a popular clergy, Septimus Harding. He is the target of a newspaper campaign to discredit him (and the High Church), which upsets him greatly, and so while he has done nothing wrong, he leaves his well paid post and retires to a modest church with an equally modest salary--quite happily. His daughter marries the man who started the problem, but who then worked tirelessly to right the matter. As this is a long story, lots of bad things must happen, so her happiness is short lived--he dies, but leaves her very well off.

Then the much loved bishop also dies, and all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, also a clergyman, will gain the office in his place. Grantly is not very likable, but he is not corrupt, and provides a middle ground for the story, which pits the good against the not so good. Instead, owing to the passage of the power of patronage to a new Prime Minister, a newcomer, the far more Evangelical Bishop Proudie, gains the see. His wife, Mrs Proudie, exercises an undue influence over the new bishop, making herself unpopular with right-thinking members of the clergy and their families. She is one of the not-so-good characters, and she has groomed Obadiah Slope to be her right-hand clergy. He is even more unlikable (aptly played by Alan Rickman, who shows that he could produce a permanent sneer long before he portrayed Professor Snape).  The series borders on 7 hours, so there are many ups and downs, intrigues that go well and those that go wrong--but ultimately there is a very satisfactory ending.  No tragedy!