Beginning with his readership beloved Washington Square, which has been filmed twice (once in 1997 under the same title and also back in the 1949 as The Heiress), the set opens with the episode titled “Catherine.” The work centers on the plain, shy, and awkward motherless wallflower Catherine Sloper whose father seems to resent her inability to follow in the footsteps of her deceased mother widely considered to have been “the wittiest, prettiest” woman in New York. When a bold, dashing, and ambitious stranger ignores some of the far more beautiful prospects at a party thrown in her younger engaged cousin’s honor in favor of chatting up Catherine, her father begins to fear that he’s a mere social climber eager to marry into money. In having to face her father’s own prejudices and disbelief that anyone could ever want his daughter and the fact there is something distinctly untrustworthy about the insistent suitor than initially meets the eye, Catherine must face some hard truths she’d long been trying to ignore.
Following up the heartbreaking tale of the weak Catherine, we move onto encounter the brainy and manipulative “Adela” (from The Marriages), who, having taken over as the matriarch of her household following her mother’s death, finds her duty to her family threatened when her father makes plans to marry the widowed Mrs. Churchley. Setting a brilliantly wicked plan into motion to sabotage the marriage as well as rectify a scandalous situation her collegiate brother has found himself in, Adela pulls no punches in holding onto her title and rank as the woman of her household.
From there we move onto 1888’s The Aspern Papers, which was inspired by “an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley devotee who tried to obtain some valuable letters written by the poet.” The episode, dubbed “Miss Tita,” after the young spinster woman who’s become a hermit from years of devotion and caretaking of her elderly, cantankerous aunt in Venice, engages our curiosity at once with the introduction of a literary scholar who arrives on the pretense of wanting to build a garden but with the true intention of wanting to get his hands on some valuable letters. Brilliantly bringing James’ narrative to life as well as his “ability to generate almost unbearable suspense while never neglecting the development of his characters,” Miss Tita concludes with a remarkable twist after twist that you’ll remember long after it ends.
Wisely breaking up the extraordinary tension produced by the first three episodes, the fourth and by far my favorite of the series finds James in Oscar Wilde territory with the Ideal Husband and Importance of Being Earnest-like, “Grace” which was based on Covering End. Although it begins seriously enough as a scheming father demands that his daughter is used as leverage to gain a politician in his pocket, soon a quintessentially British case of mistaken identity ensues in a beautiful country home with a small group of characters all finding themselves enchanted by the wrong people in a comedy of errors and romance. With a scene stealing performance by Diana Rigg who picks up the pace with her hilariously breathless and impressively long monologues as a beguiling American tourist who knows more about the home than the British occupants, “Grace” is a sheer delight and additionally one where the script itself was so good that it would make a brilliant one act play, since all of the scenes occur in one location.
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