Boston Early Music Festival: Handel's Acis and Galatea

Teresa Wakim as Galatea/Lady Chandos, and Aaron Sheehan as Acis/Lord Chandos
(Below: Wakim with Douglas Williams as Polyphemus/Alexander Pope)

Handel composed the English-language masque Acis and Galatea in 1718 when he was composer in residence at Cannons, the suburban London estate of James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon (later Duke of Chandos, the name by which I will refer to him in the rest of this post).

That the Duke chose to patronize Handel is something of a curiosity. Handel had been invited to London as a composer of Italian opera, and during his first five years in England he devoted most of his compositional energies to opera seria: he wrote Rinaldo (1711), Il pastor fido (1712), Teseo (1713), Silla (1713), and Amadigi (1715), most of which were performed by impresario Aaron Hill's company at the Haymarket Theater.

But Italian operas, and in particular the castrati who were their stars, were not universally admired in England. A number of satirists published attacks on the form for its supposed effeminacy, decadence, foreignness, and absurdity. And when Hill's opera company reached the end of its financial tether in June 1717, Handel soon found himself at Cannons working with some of the arch-enemies of Italian opera: members of the satirical Scriblerus Club such as Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Hughes.

Pope later excoriated Italian opera (but praised Handel) in The Dunciad (1728); Gay mocked Italian opera in The Beggar's Opera (1728), whose music (including tunes taken from Handel operas) was arranged by Johann Pepusch, the Duke's musical director at Cannons; and Hughes later occasioned Samuel Johnson's famous comment that he created works "intended to oppose or exclude the Italian opera, an exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed" (Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779)).

Such companions would not seem to have been entirely congenial to the cosmopolitation composer who had devoted a large share of his creative energies to Italian opera. But Handel knew the Scriblerians well—he had met them at Burlington House, the London home of his previous patron Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington—and Handel was nothing if not adaptable. All of the music he produced for the Duke had English-language texts: eleven anthems based on the Psalms, the oratorio Esther (1718) to a libretto by Pope, and Acis and Galatea, whose libretto included contributions from Gay, Pope and Hughes.

Gay was the primary collaborator with Handel on Acis, adapting the text of John Dryden's The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea (1717). Dryden's poem was a translation of an incident from Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses: The sea nymph Galatea is pursued by the Cyclops Polyphemus; she herself is in love with the the handsome young shepherd Acis (who in Ovid's telling also has semi-divine origins). In a jealous rage Polyphemus kills Acis; Galatea uses her divine powers to turn Acis' blood into a fountain (in Ovid, the origin of Sicily's River Acis), and Acis himself into a river-god.

Gilbert Blin's production of Acis and Galatea for the Boston Early Music Festival was just about the most intelligent staging imaginable. It was set as though we were watching a rehearsal at Cannons, with members of the court (in eighteenth-century costumes by Anna Watkins) taking the roles. It soon becomes clear that Acis (Aaron Sheehan) is the Duke himself, with Galatea (Teresa Wakim) being his wife, Lady Chandos, Polyphemus (Douglas Williams) Alexander Pope, and Acis' fellow shepherds, Damon (Jason McStoots) and Coridon (Michael Kelly), Handel and Gay.

Blin's assignment of roles to the historical personages present at Cannons in June 1718 was anything but arbitrary. The arias of Damon/Handel are all urgings to pleasure—surely a supreme value for a composer of Italian opera. McStoots did an especially beautiful (and poignant) job with the aria "Consider, fond Shepherd,/How fleeting's the pleasure/That flatters our hope/In pursuit of the fair" (there's a too-brief excerpt in the video below). Blin staged the aria, which Damon sings to Acis/Lord Chandos ostensibly about Galatea, to indicate Handel's own yearning for the Duke. Here Blin was drawing on the scholarship of Ellen Harris (a participant in the Festival), who in Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Harvard University Press, 2001) posits a homoerotic subtext in the vocal chamber music Handel wrote during this period.

Polyphemus, the Cyclops, is portrayed by Alexander Pope. Polyphemus is hideous of aspect; the real-life Pope had suffered from dieases in childhood that stunted his growth and left him with severe curvature of the spine. Polyphemus nurtures a hopeless love for the beautiful Galatea, who loves Acis instead; Pope had an extravagant but apparently unrequited attachment to the married Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. When Polyphemus discovers Galatea with Acis, he explodes in rage and kills Acis to punish Galatea; when Pope felt spurned by Lady Mary, he published a savage and thinly veiled attack on her, writing that the fate of her male acquaintances was to be either "poxed by her love, or libelled by her hate." Watkins' costume for Polyphemus cleverly alludes both to the Cyclops and to Pope: he wears an eye-patch, making him one-eyed, and carries a large walking stick (later the instrument of Acis' death).

Musically the production was exquisite; Handel's vocal writing in Acis offers gorgeous aria after gorgeous aria. All of the five vocalists have wonderfully pure and pleasing voices, and their ornamentation of repeated aria verses was beautiful, intelligent, and truly enhanced the vocal line. The music looked back to Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1689) and The Fairy Queen (1692) in its lovely melodies, and forward to Mozart in an extraordinary trio where Polyphemus violently interrupts a love duet between Acis and Galatea; the treble instruments play the lovers' melody, while the bass instruments play Polyphemus'. The one-to-a-part instrumental forces, led by lutenist Paul O'Dette, baroque guitarist Stephen Stubbs, and harpsichordist Avi Stein, were perhaps somewhat smaller than those the Duke had at his disposal, but the stripped-down sound made the textures of Handel's writing wonderfully clear.

Acis and Galatea was the high point of our concert-going at the Boston Early Music Festival. It was so good that afterwards we decided on impulse to stay for the delightful late-night concert of duets by Handel and Agostino Steffani which followed.

But that's a post for another time. Here's a taste of this Acis production; we can only hope that the BEMF will soon release a full-length CD or DVD recording:

Bollywood Rewatch 1: Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam

Every new love affair passes through a heady period of infatuation. You want to spend all your time with your beloved, you obsess about them when you're apart, and even their flaws and idiosyncrasies are endearing. As time passes, that early whirlwind of passion can settle into a more sober, clear-sighted, but perhaps longer-lasting admiration and affection. Sometimes, of course, seeing your love through new and perhaps more judicious eyes can prove fatal to the relationship.

So it was with some trepidation that we went back to rewatch some of the films that we first saw early on in our Bollywood viewing, including English Babu Desi Mem (1996), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Hum Tum (2004), Bunty aur Babli (2005), and Vivah (2006). These are all films that we had liked very much on a first viewing, but for some reason had only watched once. Would these early favorites remain so after a rewatch? Not always, as it turned out.

Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (My Heart Belongs To You, 1999)
Original rating: ★★★ (strongly recommended)
Rewatch rating: ★★ (recommended with reservations)

In my first post on HDDCS in "Bollywood for the curious," I said that the movie "combines the attractions of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's gorgeous settings, the young Aishwarya Rai's astonishing dancing (and astonishing beauty), and Ajay Devgan's understated and affecting performance as the husband." All of those virtues, along with Ismail Darbar's excellent music, are vividly exemplified in the song "Nimbooda." Vanraj (Ajay) sees Nandini (Aishwarya) for the first time as she performs at a wedding, and (as we do) finds her electrifying:

But HDDCS also, to an extent that I must have blocked out, features Salman Khan in a role that I think is meant to be carefree, playful, and flirtatious, but is mainly irritating. Salman plays Sameer, a free-spirited Italo-Indian musician who comes to study at the house of Pandit Darbar (played by Vikram Gokhale; the Pandit's name, we realized on our rewatch, is likely a tribute to the film's composer). Nandini is Pandit Darbar's daughter, and after an initial antagonism Nandini and Sameer fall in love.

In the song "Aankhon Ki Gustakhiyan," Nandini and Sameer flirt with and play lover's pranks on one another during a wedding. Bhansali imperceptibly segues into Sameer's and then Nandini's fantasies, and back to reality. (Sameer's fantasy begins about 2:10 when Nandini leaves the circle of dancers and ends at 2:40, when he burns his hand on the flames of the lamps that his fantasy Nandini had blown out; Nandini's fantasy begins about 3:20 when she is caught in the wrapping of Sameer's turban, and ends around 3:55, when she opens her eyes to see his turban being finished.) The whole sequence, with its swirling movement and color, and its depiction of story and character in song, shows that at his best Bhansali can be brilliant:

When Nandini's father finds out about this budding love affair, though, he banishes Sameer from his house, and arranges Nandini's marriage to the wealthy Vanraj. After the wedding, Vanraj quickly realizes that his wife loves another man, and—despite the profound pain it causes him—takes her to Italy to try to find Sameer.

—Spoiler alert!—

HDDCS was probably the third or fourth Bollywood movie we saw, and I was completely unprepared both for Vanraj's response to the unwelcome knowledge that Nandini loves Sameer, and for Nandini's final choice between the two men (which is utterly unlike the way an American version of the same plot would be resolved).

On a rewatch it's clear that Nandini's connection to Sameer was one of youthful infatuation, and that she has grown and changed over the intervening time. It's not just for reasons of wifely duty that she chooses Vanraj; she has come to recognize that his deep love and devotion, which she has begun to return, are a better basis for a lifelong relationship than Sameer's boyish excitability.

—End of spoiler—

Bhansali makes some major missteps, including having Sameer repeatedly talk to a rumble of thunder that is supposed to be his father in heaven. (His mother in Italy, I appreciated on our rewatch, is played by Salman's real-life mother stepmother Helen.*) To have the thunder respond to Sameer once would be an ambiguous and mildly amusing joke; to have it happen a half-dozen times or more is just silly.

So I'm sorry to say that, while we still enjoyed HDDCS the second time around, its flaws—primarily in Bhansali's conception of the role of Sameer and in Salman's hyperkinetic and over-enthusiastic performance—were much more apparent. Still, what Bhansali does well, he does really well, as in "Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje":

A word should be said here in praise of Bhansali's collaborators Shabina Khan and Neeta Lulla (costumes), Saroj Khan, Natbar Maharana and Vaibhavi Merchant (choreography), and the great playback singers such as Kavita Krishnamurthy ("Nimbooda" and "Aankhon Ki Gustakhiyan"), Karsan Sagathia ("Nimbooda"), and Kumar Sanu ("Aankhon Ki Gustakhiyan"), among others.

More Bollywood Rewatch posts to follow.

Update 10 July 2011: The Bollywood Rewatch post on Vivah is now available.

Update 3 September 2013: For the third post in this series, see Bollywood Rewatch 3: Kandukondain Kandukondain.

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* See FilmiGirl's comment below.

Men against women: 7 Khoon Maaf, No One Killed Jessica, and Pardes

7 Khoon Maaf (Seven Forgiven Murders, 2011) is Vishal Bhardwaj's attempt at a modern film noir. According to a typology proposed by John Blaser in No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir, there are three kinds of noir women: the supportive Good Woman, the suffocating Marrying Kind, and the seductive Femme Fatale. Typically, the femme fatale "refuses to play the role of devoted wife and loving mother that mainstream society prescribes for women."

But in 7 Khoon Maaf, being a devoted wife and loving mother is all that Susanna (Priyanka Chopra) wants. Unfortunately for her and for them, the men who are drawn to marry her all have fatal flaws: they are emotionally repressed and controlling (the wooden Neil Nitin Mukesh is perfectly cast in the role of a rigid army officer), needy and narcissistic (John Abraham as a heroin- and groupie-addicted rock star), brutal (Irrfan Khan as a sadistic poet), deceptive (Aleksandr Dyachenko as a Russian agent with a double life), exploitative (Annu Kapoor as a police inspector who coerces Susanna into sex), and murderous (Naseeruddin Shah as a doctor whose mushroom diet can cure or kill). Those flaws are literally fatal for each of the men in turn, for like Blaser's description of the classic femme fatale, Susanna must "resort to murder to free herself from an unbearable relationship with a man who would try to possess and control her, as if she were a piece of property or a pet."

I haven't read the Ruskin Bond short story "Susanna's Seven Husbands" on which writer/director Bhardwaj based his movie, but the main problem with the film version is one of tone. At times 7 Khoon Maaf seems to be straining for black comedy, and at others seems to take itself entirely seriously. There's also a distracting issue with chronology—characters seem to age at different rates—and an unmotivated ending. Although it's interesting to see Priyanka playing such an ambiguous role, it's not the best work of anyone involved.

No One Killed Jessica (2011) highlights a real-life incident in which, in front of horrified witnesses at a party, model Jessica Lall was shot and killed by Manu Sharma, the son of a high-ranking politician. When the case finally came to trial after seven years, a taped confession by the killer was ruled inadmissible, it was discovered that evidence had been tampered with, and several key eyewitnesses retracted their testimony and claimed that they hadn't seen the shooting after all. Sharma and his accomplices were acquitted.

Two reporters from the newsmagazine Tehelka, Harinder Baweja and Vineet Khare, went undercover to investigate witness tampering and police malfeasance in the case. Through dogged and courageous work the journalists exposed the bribes and intimidation employed by the Sharma family to turn the witnesses and contaminate the evidence.

It's a compelling story, well-presented by writer/director Raj Kumar Gupta. And it's a true pleasure to watch the interplay between Vidya Balan as Jessica's sister Sabrina and Rani Mukherji as fictionalized crusading journalist Meera Gaity. Meera isn't a cardboard heroine: she smokes, is far from demure, sleeps with her sometime boyfriend, and won't take no for an answer. It's great to see Rani—who sometimes seems to be cast for her ability to twinkle appealingly and cry convincingly—in the role of a tough, feisty and not entirely likeable woman. In the role of Sabrina, Vidya Balan convincingly portrays a woman slowly emerging from emotional shell-shock and beginning to acknowledge the possibility of hope. Note to Bollywood producers: can we please have more movies with substantive, complex roles for actresses of the caliber of Rani and Vidya?

In Pardes (Foreign, 1997), Ganga (Mahima Chaudhry in her film debut) is a beautiful, voluptuous but innocent girl brought up in an idyllic rural village. As her name and other attributes might suggest, Ganga is the embodiment of Traditional Indian Values. Which is precisely why NRI millionaire Kishorilal (Amrish Puri) approaches Ganga's father Suraj Dev (Alok Nath) to arrange Ganga's marriage to his son.

In a Yash-Chopra-esque song sequence for "I Love My India," Kishorilal, Ganga, Suraj Dev—and director Subhash Ghai in a brief cameo—celebrate the folkloric, mythical, unchanging India that for the men is represented by Ganga:

Yeh duniya ik dulhan
Dulhan ke maathe ki bindiya
Yeh mera India
I love my India
Vatan mera India
Sajan mera India
Karam mera India
Dharam mera India

The world is a bride,
and the jewel on her forehead
is my India.
I love my India.
India my homeland,
India my beloved,
India my fate,
India my religion:

Kishorilal's son Rajiv (Apurva Agnihotri) is thoroughly Westernized, meaning that he smokes, drinks, and sleeps with his (ex-?)girlfriend. Rajiv's foster brother Arjun (Shah Rukh Khan) is sent to India to act as a go-between. As Arjun's name suggests, he's loyal to a fault: he claims that a pack of cigarettes that Ganga finds in Rajiv's coat is his own, and when she pleads for the truth tells her that Rajiv will make her happy.

Of course, when Ganga travels to America to visit with Rajiv after their engagement, things don't go well. On a visit to Las Vegas, the city that epitomizes Western sinfulness, a drunken Rajiv tries to rape Ganga. Arjun promises to help Ganga and returns with her to India, immediately leading Rajiv, Kishorilal, and Suraj Dev to conclude that they are having an affair. Soon all three are trying to kill Arjun.

Perhaps the Subhash Ghai writing and directing credits should have given me fair warning me about Pardes. For me, Ghai's movies require having a finger ever ready to press the fast forward button on the DVD remote; see my brief review of Khal Nayak (The Anti-Hero, 1993), and Ajnabi's hilarious essay on the "shameful classic" Yaadein (Memories, 2001). When Alok Nath, Bollywood's quintessential Good Dad, is reduced to a screaming maniac wielding a sword and trying to kill his own daughter and her supposed lover, then we're too deep into Subhash Ghai Land for the likes of me.

If you can ignore the movie's simplistic dichotomies and a story that's both unoriginal and over-the-top, Pardes does have some redeeming features. The lovely Chaudhry is styled and dressed to look like Madhuri Dixit circa Khal Nayak, which is not a bad thing. And as the catchy "I love my India" suggests, the music is well done, especially the climactic qawwali "Nahin Hona Tha". Finally, as huge SRK fans my partner and I are willing to forgive much in order to watch our man in action. But I don't think we'll ever be tempted again to go Pardes.

Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games

A vast range of classic and contemporary Bollywood films are alluded to over the course of Vikram Chandra's 950-page novel Sacred Games (HarperCollins, 2006). The cover of the paperback version reinforces the Bollywood connection: it features images of what look like Isha Koppikar from Don (2006) and (perhaps) Abhishek Bachchan from Dhoom (2004). The crime-movie references are highly relevant, because Sacred Games tells the story of small-time thug Ganesh Gaitonde's rise to become the ruthless, hyper-violent ruler of a criminal empire. Intertwined with Gaitonde's story is that of police inspector Sartaj Singh, who becomes involved in the investigation of Gaitonde's final days.

But to call Sacred Games a crime novel or thriller wouldn't convey the imaginative richness of Chandra's storytelling or the vividness of his descriptions of the streets and alleyways of Mumbai. We experience the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of daily life in the "maximum city" (to borrow the title of a book by Chandra's friend and collaborator Suketu Mehta), and encounter dozens of characters from chai-wallas to film stars. That narrative vividness is particularly apparent in a series of "Insets" that provide in-depth backstories for several of the characters. The insets also reveal some unsuspected ironies and surprising familial connections.

Chandra's own familial connections to Bollywood include his mother Kamna Chandra (writer for Prem Rog (1982), Chandni (1989), and 1942: A Love Story (1993)); his sister Tanuja Chandra (writer for Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), director of Sangharsh (1999) and Sur (2002)); his sister Anupama Chopra, writer of books on Sholay, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Shah Rukh Khan; and his brother-in-law Vidhu Vinod Chopra, writer/director/producer of Parinda (1989), 1942: A Love Story, and Mission Kashmir (2000).

Chandra himself contributed to Mission Kashmir, a film to which there are a number of explicit and coded references in Sacred Games. There are the name-checks of Jackie Shroff and Sanjay Dutt. There's that impossibly good-looking gigolo, who sounds like he's modelled on another hunky actor from MK: "He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, and had the smallest waist Sartaj had seen on  a man in a long while. He narrowed like an inverted triangle from the shoulders to the hips, and the quick travel from the gym-broadened shoulders to the absence of belly gave him the look of a cartoon figure" (p. 438). And then there's that morning when Sartaj sings a certain song in the shower: "Things were falling apart, but Sartaj stood in the shower and soaped his chest and sang Bhumro bhumro along with the radio from the apartment below" (p. 528):

Preity Zinta and Hrithik Roshan in a scene from Mission Kashmir.

In Sacred Games filmi songs, classic and contemporary, provide the soundtrack of the lives of cops and criminals alike, and the references will provide an additional level of pleasure for Bollywood fans. (At the back of the book Chandra has provided a glossary that identifies many of his references, plus a list of his favorite films.)

There is also some sly commentary on the film business: when Gaitonde finances a movie for Zoya Mirza, a strikingly tall Miss India turned gangster's mistress turned surgically-enhanced Bollywood star, he dreams big: "'The emotion of Mother India, the scale of Sholay, the speed of Amar Akbar Anthony. That's what we want'" (p. 676). What he gets is the generic thriller International Dhamaka, which contains "shooting and kissing and car crashes and tears and torn hearts" (p. 682)—and which flops.

Sacred Games could itself be made into a filmi thriller. But ultimately what makes it compelling isn't the mystery plot but the fullness and complexity of its characters and the messy, corrupt, unjust, violent but vibrant world in which they, like we, must live.

Vikram Chandra has his own website, http://www.vikramchandra.com/, and there is also one for Sacred Games itself: http://www.sacredgames.net/

Update 5 June 2011: Since writing this post I've learned that Sartaj Singh first made an appearance in the story "Kama" from Vikram Chandra's 1997 collection Love and Longing in Bombay. In that story his divorce from his wife Megha is finalized, an event from which he is still recovering as Sacred Games opens.

I've also learned that there is 1999 movie starring Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna called International Khiladi which may be one of the models for International Dhamaka. International Khiladi is a crime/mob story, it features international travel (to exotic Canada), and lots of fight scenes, tears and torn hearts. Not to mention lady wrestlers! You can read a hilarious discussion of it on the Bollywhat? Forum here.

Lark Rise to Candleford

We've become addicted to BBC literary adaptations, and are currently halfway through the excellent first season of Lark Rise to Candleford (2008). The series is based on three semi-autobiographical novels by Flora Thompson: Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943). Thompson's life closely parallels that of her fictional heroine Laura Timmins (Thompson's maiden name was Timms): like Flora, Laura is born in a rural hamlet, has a stonemason father, a mother named Emma, and at age 15 goes to work at the post office in a nearby town.

Olivia Hallinan as Laura

I haven't read the books on which it's based, but the Lark Rise television series at first feels like a cross between Anne of Green Gables (by which I mean the delightful 1985/87 CBC Television adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne Shirley novels) and Cranford (the excellent 2005 BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford novellas). Like Anne, at its center is the story of a young rural woman learning to make her way in the wider world; like Cranford, its setting offers a microcosm of the social, political, economic and technological changes occurring in England in the late 19th century.

There's another reason Lark Rise resembles Elizabeth Gaskell: key members of its superb cast are drawn from the adaptions Cranford (the magnificent Julia Sawalha—Jessie Brown in Cranford—as Candleford's postmistress Dorcas Lane, and Claudie Blakley—Martha in Cranford—as Laura's mother Emma) and 2004's North and South (Brendan Coyle—working-class hero Nicholas Higgins in North and South—as Laura's father Robert). You might also recognize a familiar face or two from various Charles Dickens and Jane Austen adaptations.

Julia Sawalha as Dorcas

For its first five episodes Lark Rise is a warm, humanistic portrait of hamlet and town. Through Laura's eyes we come to know the the colorful characters who inhabit Lark Rise, the class tensions between hamlet and town, and the wisdom and kindness of Dorcas Lane. Each episode features a minor crisis which is resolved through Dorcas' quiet good sense. We gradually learn more about the characters, including what seems to be the warmth of a lingering but unacknowledged affection between Dorcas and the handsome squire Sir Timothy Midwinter (to the dismay of his wife, Lady Adelaide). At the end of each episode, a voice-over from the adult Laura frames everything we've just seen in the retrospective glow of nostalgia.

Claudie Blakley as Emma and Brendan Coyle as Robert

Had Lark Rise continued in this way we would have been perfectly content to keep watching, especially since the series' writing, acting, and visuals are so fine. But then came Episode 6.

In Episode 6 a mute young girl, abandoned by her impoverished family, inadvertently exposes the unspoken fears and longings of any number of characters, including Emma...

Lady Adelaide...

Ruby Douglas as Polly and Olivia Grant as Lady Adelaide

Sir Timothy...

Ben Miles as Sir Timothy

and Dorcas herself.

Everything comes to a head on one sleepless night where half of Candleford winds up at the post office, while Dorcas and her staff desperately try to conceal Polly's presence. It is on this night, as well, that Lady Adelaide and Dorcas finally meet for a heart-to-heart talk—an exchange of confidences that is emotionally perilous for both of them.

Meanwhile, there is a misdelivered love poem wreaking havoc, awakened memories of lost loved ones, and the ever-watchful presence of the meddling Pratt sisters:

Matilda Ziegler as Pearl and Victoria Hamilton as Ruby

The episode is brilliantly written and structured, and takes the series into different and more deeply affecting territory. We can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Update 14 May 2011: For readers in the SF Bay Area, KTEH, the PBS station for the South Bay and San Francisco peninsula, is showing the first season of Lark Rise on Saturdays at 9 pm. The first episode will be broadcast tonight.