An Adaptation of an Adaptation: The Forsyte Saga (2002)

Abstract

At first appearance the most “classic” of the period dramas under consideration here, Granada television’s 2002 adaptation of The Forsyte Saga is an obvious starting point for the consideration of the Edwardian age on the small screen over the last decade. Previously a huge popular success when it aired in the late 1960s, its reincarnation in 2002 (and its second series in 2003) can be considered appropriate for the beginning of a new century, given that its key subject matter is the transition from one era to the next. Indeed, given that it was being filmed at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, it can be read as a period drama for a post 9/11 age. Chapters 3 and 4 of this project will argue that the stately home and the department store act as states in microcosm, and I suggest here that the Forsyte family seems to function as a “family politic” in a similar way. Its claustrophobic insularity — the series is entirely focused on the Forsytes’ clan and those that marry into it, and almost all its scenes are set within their houses — can be considered reflective of the isolationist, inward looking world view that characterised many of the foreign policies of the Western powers in the first years of the twenty-first century.