Move over, Mary Hartman, and make way for a real lady. Her name is Glencora Palliser—Lady Glencora Palliser. She just may be the most entrancing TV character of the '70s—as quickwitted as Rhoda, as attractive as Mary Tyler Moore, as sexy as any of Charlie's Angels. And where did this superlative creature spring from? Why, from the prolific pen of Anthony Trollope, the very prototype of the long-stemmed Victorian novelist.
Lady Glencora, played by a dazzling Susan Hampshire, is the dominating character of The Pallisers, a 22-part British-made series based on Trollope's political novels; it begins next Monday, Jan. 31 (9 p.m. E.S.T.), on PBS. Hampshire is only one of many reasons to watch The Pallisers. In the grand tradition of The Forsyte Saga and Upstairs, Downstairs, the series is elegant, historical soap opera, complete with duels, lecherous dukes, love lost and found, intrigue in the Houses of Parliament, exquisitely smart costumes and roman tic settings amid the topiary.
When The Pallisers was shown on the BBC in 1974, it proved powerfully addictive. On the nights it was aired, dinners were rescheduled and telephones went unanswered. Critics initially complained that Scriptwriter Simon Raven had tweaked Trollope's beard and had taken too many liberties with his novels. One called The Pallisers "a kind of comic historical waxworks." Almost all eventually fell under its spell, however, agreeing that the series was one of the few that could actually tie viewers to the set week after week. The program has also been shown in the U.S. on Home Box Office, providing HBO with a surprise hit.
Victorian Equation. The first episode opens in the early 1860s at the Duke of Omnium's annual garden party. Glencora M'Cluskie, an orphaned heiress, alarms her aunts by flirting with Burgo Fitzgerald, a young dissolute whom Trollope describes as the handsomest man in all England. The aunts thereupon pick up their skirts and march up to the old duke to present him with an inescapable fact: they have an eligible niece, while he has an eligible nephew—his heir, the aspiring politician Plantagenet Palliser. The duke sees the merit of the equation and gives his nephew a quick lesson in marital arithmetic. When Palliser demurs that he and Glencora do not love each other, the duke, with impeccable Victorian logic, retorts: "Love? We are talking about marriage."
From that simple situation—an impossible but inevitable marriage—unfolds The Pallisers' intricate plot. Glencora sparkles with good spirits and impetuosity. Plantagenet, admirably played by Philip Latham, has a manner so arid that he seems to exhale dust, like an overloaded vacuum cleaner, every time he speaks. Gradually, however, they grow—and grow believably —into love. Glencora gives up any notion of running away with the scoundrel Burgo Fitzgerald. Plantagenet, for his part, relinquishes his dream of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer so that he can take her to the Continent. Eventually, however, he does become Chancellor, then Prime Minister, and inherits his dukedom; Glencora becomes a celebrated hostess and the