"South Riding," a three-parter beginning Sunday night on public television's "Masterpiece," is a nice, soothing stop at the methadone-and-biscuits clinic for you Anglophiles coming off the week's royal wedding binge. What a ride it's been, eh, old chaps and chapettes? In addition to the wedding mania, we've had "Downton Abbey," a new "Upstairs Downstairs" and an Oscar for "The King's Speech" — truly an embarrassment of riches.
Like most of those, "South Riding" is situated in that British drama sweet spot: betwixt the first and second world wars, in that fraught zone of manners when the rules of class and gender have begun to go all higgeldy-piggeldy.
Faithfully based on Winifred Holtby's 1936 novel (which has been previously adapted to a TV movie, a film and even a radio drama), "South Riding" tells the story of Sarah Burton, a modern-minded woman who is one of the "surplus 2 million" — a charming demographic term that could only have been coined by male newspaper editors trying to describe women who were deprived of husbands because World War I depleted the ranks.
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Thirtysomething Sarah (Anna Maxwell Martin) has returned from London to her little home town, the fictional South Riding, which sits by the sea in Yorkshire. Here, she persuades the town council — chaired by Mrs. Beddows (“Downton Abbey’s” Penelope Wilton) — to hire her as headmistress at the fusty high school for girls. She gets the job after making an emphatic plea for preparing South Riding’s young women for a changing world.
One of the more influential men in town, Robert Carne (David Morrissey), isn’t too impressed with her talk and would yank his daughter, Midge (Midge! There’s a name I’d like to see come back!), out of the school except that Sarah has somehow gotten through to the nervous girl and brought her out of her shell. He’s a dour sort — hard exterior, soulful center — struggling to keep his estate afloat and provide the best care for his mentally ill wife, who is institutionalized with no hope of recovery.
In addition to encouraging Midge, headmistress Sarah is also taken with Lydia (a name that can stay where it was), a brilliant but rambunctious girl who lives in abject poverty in a shantytown by the sea cliffs and attends the school on scholarship. Things get rough when Lydia’s mother dies and her father demands that she stay home to care for her many younger siblings.
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“South Riding” has everything you could want from a “Masterpiece” event: perfect period details; a forlornly gray surf; a swelling soundtrack; disputes over crunchy-gravel real estate; whistling trains and black-tie dinners in hotels; a believable and compelling story involving multiple characters and plots; and a faithfulness to its original material (Holtby’s novel) that allows for a textured, even sorrowful bleakness.
It’s a wallow as Sarah and Robert discover that they are attracted to each other but cannot act on it. Everyone in “South Riding” carries a little or lot of hurt, and the story is unsparing with losses large and small, all of it leading toward a future (and another war) that will require stiffer upper lips than the ones these people have.
The unmistakable grace note of “South Riding” is its belief in the independence and strength of its female characters in contrast with the sappiness and helplessness of its men. Surplus women? Balderdash.
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