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Susan Hampshire was an inspired choice. She moves so naturally and effortlessly through the role that it is hard to believe that she probably worked harder than anyone else in the cast. A childhood victim of dyslexia, she still has great difficulty reading. Such a long and involved screenplay was nothing less than agony. "It takes me ten times as long as everyone else to get it right," she says. "When they're blocking out the movements, I'm still struggling with the script." Her efforts have paid off. The series has enabled Hampshire to get prime parts in the theater, her first love. She is concluding a West End run in Somerset Maugham's The Circle.
The Pallisers has been good for Trollope as well. When it was shown in Britain, the program started a Trollope boomlet, and it may do the same thing in the U.S. An early American admirer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, once wrote that Trollope's novels had "the strength of beef and the inspiration of ale." After a steady diet of TV gruel, Americans may find The Pallisers nutritious fare indeed.