(4 of 4)
Not surprisingly, the series has inherited some of the book's shortcomings. As leisurely and sinuous in its flow as the Ganges, sometimes crashing through rapids, more often meandering into tributaries, Jewel does on occasion get bogged down in its own complexities. In the middle episodes, when the action closes in on Layton and four other mem-sahibs, the show could be mistaken for a provincial soap opera, and a brackish one at that. Sometimes too it parades a kind of sincerity that teeters on melodrama. Symbols are spelled out, symmetries underlined, characters displayed with embarrassing nakedness. Merrick never tires of proclaiming his lower-class origins, and Kumar commits such lines as "I hate ... most of all myself, for being black and being English." Nevertheless, the rippling succession of slow, soft moments gathers such cumulative resonance that the series' conclusion is both shattering and ineffably moving.
In Britain earlier this year, Jewel became a fashionable rage and a national addiction. Each week it held 8 million viewers hostage; it sparked a revisionist debate in the press about imperial guilt and glory; and, in the end, it was almost unanimously acclaimed. Jewel's subject may seem more distant to American viewers. But they would be well advised to set aside their Sunday evenings for the next three months to follow this uncommonly rewarding series. There could be no truer memorial to Scott's quiet masterpiece and no grander elegy to the ambiguous power of the Empire. —By Pico Iyer