This review contains spoilers.
Can we spend a moment or two in celebration of Rebecca Hall? Since the episode one scene in which Sylvia composedly tutted over the quality of the hotel notepaper whilst being held at gunpoint by a cast-aside lover, Hall’s been like a tap root for this adaptation’s moisture, drenching her scenes with brains and fizz, and leaving those without her feeling parched.
Arguing naked in a bathtub, upstaging the deceased at a funeral, or having her doorknob rattled by a chancing houseguest, Stoppard and Hall have made Sylvia not just an enjoyable source of capricious wit, but crucially, sympathetic. Even – and admittedly this is yet to come – at her worst.
Being so much cleverer than the doltish men who fall at her feet with such regularity she barely pauses to raise a disdainful eyebrow at their latest inarticulate declaration of love, the only man in England Sylvia admires is husband Christopher Tietjens, the sole chap - these days at least - impervious to her considerable charms.
It’s thanks to Hall and Stoppard that Sylvia, even in such a telescoped form of Ford’s narrative, comes across as much more than simply the glamorous, selfish bitch of Parade’s End. In other hands, she could so easily have been rendered a Joan Collins-alike, strutting around throwing plates and flaunting love affairs. Instead, she’s complex, desperately smart, and a complete joy to watch.
This week’s Sylvia highlight was her Cleopatra-like arrival at one of Macmaster’s insufferable Fridays. A column of gold, she brimmed with self-possession and danger, ready to squash white mouse Valentine (now – of all the unfashionable things in the world - a PE teacher) underfoot. Keep orf the grass? I’d have listened. When she raised that horse whip at impudent Brownlie, I can’t have been alone in flinching.
Sylvia’s reaction to the suggestion she feign being a knitter of socks for the sake of good PR was similarly priceless. Were she fictionally born a couple of decades later, she’d have gotten along famously with The English Patient’s whip-smart adulterer Katherine Clifton, who gave us the wise words “A woman should never learn to sew, and if she can, she shouldn’t admit to it.”
If Sylvia can’t rightly be called the heart of Parade’s End, then she’s certainly the tongue. (If it was she, and not Father Consett sending the Germans war secrets instead of toffees, you can suppose she’d have talked her way out of swinging on the gallows.) Yes, Tietjens is given to monologues - this week’s poetic description of the sound of frontline shells a head-swimmingly great example -, but Sylvia too has a gift for beautifully turned phrases, and Hall’s coup is delivering them as naturally as a how-do-you-do.
This episode saw society gossip bring about the downfall of Tietjens Sr., the episode’s second suicide in a single half-hour. The men of Parade’s End not dying on the front line are doing swift work dispatching themselves in the grisliest of ways, from the potty vicar’s bloody bath to Christopher and Mark’s father’s self-administered shotgun wound.
Neither death was granted gravitas or dignity; both were rendered with Parade’s End’s characteristically grim sense of humour. Crawling headfirst into a hedge, dead rabbit in tow, was not a glorious exit for Tietjens’ Sr., nor was Duchemin ruining Edith’s wallpaper with that overflowing bath an heroic one.
Continuing the farce were grotty social climbing newlyweds Mr and Mrs Macmaster, who did nothing to stop Christopher’s reputation falling to ruin thanks to rumours born out of his generosity to them in the previous episode.
Refusing to deny or defend himself against the muck spread at his club cost Christopher greatly, leading to his realisation this week that “…living by an outmoded code of conduct” was doing him no good at all.
It was a cruel trick of Ford’s that Christopher and Valentine’s gratification be delayed further (though it's hard not to think that Sylvia would have made the most of a horde of sailors turning up unexpectedly to an assignation...), even if it is difficult to feel greatly moved by the as-yet unconsummated couple's wispy, golden-hearted love.
Rupert Everett had more play this week as Mark, securing first his brother’s discredited reputation, and secondly somewhere for him to enjoy a fireside mutton chop. Everett, like the rest of the ensemble, is well-cast in the role, and a convincing match for Cumberbatch's buttoned-up Englishness.
Cumberbatch’s grunting, rattling teacup performance post-trenches trauma was as good as we’ve come to expect from him as Christopher, and the aforementioned bedside shelling speech his crowning moment in the series so far. After declaring his country over and its people barbarians, off again to France he goes, the last decent man in England, taking another step towards Parade’s End’s slowly unfolding tragedy.
Read Louisa’s review of last week’s episode, here.
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