Brideshead Reunited

Before Downton Abbey, or the big Merchant Ivory movies of the 1980s, there was Brideshead Revisited, the 11-part series based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel, which would change both British and American television forever. With a reunion of the cast, 35 years on, MICHAEL LINDSAY-HOGG, the show’s original director, recalls the beginnings of their epic achievement 

In the late summer of 1978, Derek Granger asked me if I’d like to come over for a drink. We sat in his pretty back garden and chatted, idly at first. I was doing well as a director of dramas in what was a high point of British television. Derek and I had first gotten to know each other on a four-hour train ride from Manchester to London 20 years earlier. I was working as a trainee floor manager for Granada Television before going up to Oxford, and Derek had just joined the company—first as a researcher, eventually becoming head of drama—after an admired run as theater critic for the Financial Times.

“Look,” he said suddenly, “Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited. Have you ever read it?”

“Yes. It’s my favorite novel. I read it first when I was 17.”

“Well, the thing is, Granada’s going to do it for television. I’m producing. Do you want to direct it?”

I felt, as if from the balmy summer sky, flowers—colorful, sweet-smelling—were floating toward my head.

Then began eight months of casting, costuming, junking scripts by an eminent adapter that had gone in the wrong direction, starting again, going back to the novel, and putting in what turned out to be the crucial element—the voice-over by Charles Ryder. Jeremy Irons, who, up to then, was best known for a featured role in a British TV series called Love for Lydia, would play Charles. Anthony Andrews, who scored a success in Danger UXB, about a World War II bomb-disposal expert, would play his great friend, Lord Sebastian Flyte.