Gormenghast (2000– )

A villain threatens the rise of a new earl in an ancient kingdom.

Stars:

Celia Imrie, Christopher Lee, Warren Mitchell

4 wins & 5 nominations.

Cast

Series cast summary:
Celia Imrie	...	Lady Gertrude (4 episodes, 2000)
Christopher Lee	...	Flay (4 episodes, 2000)
Warren Mitchell	...	Barquentine (4 episodes, 2000)
Neve McIntosh	...	Lady Fuchsia (4 episodes, 2000)
Jonathan Rhys Meyers	...	Steerpike (4 episodes, 2000)
John Sessions	...	Dr. Prunesquallor (4 episodes, 2000)
Fiona Shaw	...	Irma Prunesquallor (4 episodes, 2000)
June Brown	...	Nannie Slagg (3 episodes, 2000)
Lynsey Baxter	...	Cora Groan (3 episodes, 2000)
Zoë Wanamaker	...	Clarice Groan (3 episodes, 2000)
George Antoni	...	Bookman (3 episodes, 2000)
Sean Hughes	...	Poet (3 episodes, 2000)
Stephen Fry	...	Professor Bellgrove (2 episodes, 2000)
Richard Griffiths	...	Swelter (2 episodes, 2000)
Ian Richardson	...	Lord Groan (2 episodes, 2000)
Windsor Davies	...	Rottcodd (2 episodes, 2000)
Olga Sosnovska	...	Keda (2 episodes, 2000)
Eric Sykes	...	Mollocks (2 episodes, 2000)

Storyline

Gormenghast is an ancient city-state which primarily consists of a rambling and crumbling castle. The narrative, based on the first two of the three Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake, begins with the birth of a son, Titus, to the 76th Earl, Sepulchrave Groan, and Countess Gertrude. This mismatched pair (he'd prefer the melancholy privacy of his library; she'd prefer the company of her menagerie of cats and birds) also have a teenaged daughter, Fuchsia, who resents her new brother but comes to love him dearly. Simultaneously, a young kitchen apprentice, Steerpike, takes advantage of an altercation between head cook Swelter and the Earl's manservant, Mr. Flay, and escapes from the kitchens. Gormenghast is rigidly feudal in structure, but Steerpike has ambitions. He befriends the imaginative, yearning Fuchsia, and through her becomes apprenticed to the castle physician, Dr. Prunesquallor, who lives with his man-hunting sister Irma. This position allows Steerpike to work his way into the...

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Plot Keywords:

library | ambition | tv mini series | tradition | steampunk | 

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Taglines:

77 generations built the kingdom of Gormenghast... Will one kitchen boy bring it down?

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Genres:

Adventure | Comedy | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Official Sites:

BBC Online PBS [us]

Country:

UK USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

10 June 2000 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), WGBH

Technical Specs

Runtime:

232 min 232 min (4 parts)

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

To create a sense of scale and depth when they were photographed, the castle miniatures were placed into large tanks of water to which disinfectant (Jeyes Fluid) had also been added to make it slightly cloudy. The post production house responsible for compositing and other special effects were in awe of the skills and ingenuity of the traditional model makers, but exasperated by the variability of the images that this "organic" method generated, making their colour-correction and image matching tasks much more difficult than with computer generated images.

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Quotes

Steerpike: I understand!
Lady Fuchsia: No, you don't!
Steerpike: If I understand anything, I understand anger. And that's because I understand what it feels like to be rejected. And don't think I don't understand loneliness too.
Lady Fuchsia: I'm sorry!
[throws herself in his arms before soon after jerking away from him again]
Lady Fuchsia: No! No, this is horrible! YOU'RE horrible! You leave me alone! Never come near me!
[runs off]
Steerpike: [to himself] I can wait...

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Connections

Spin-off The Boy in Darkness (2000)

User Reviews

Interesting, sumptuous adaptation.

I was at first apprehensive to see what were some of my favourite books ever written being made into a film. Upon reading the books, I had always dreamt of adapting this work to the screen myself... though not everything was quite the way I envisioned it, the BBC has done an exemplary job in casting and set design, recreating the askew world of Gormenghast in a fashion that Mervyn Peake himself would have most probably been proud of.

Though the time limitations make for a very accelerated version of the slow, brooding books, and a few liberties are taken with the plot, Gormenghast is a very competent, excellently acted gothic fantasy drama. Though a little too bright & colourful and betraying the BBC's penchant for filmed stage dramas (it seems very much like a play), Gormenghast the miniseries does the brilliant books justice as much as any film could.