Like so much Forster, Howards End is hugely involving even though 90 percent of it consists of people talking in rooms and reading letters. Then Henry becomes smitten with Margaret, and she with him, and he has to decide whether he wants to welcome a half-German with revolutionary sympathies into his grieving moneybags family, and reveal that Ruth willed her the house and he never told her. The Wilcoxes provide further plot complications when Ruth dies (this is not really a spoiler, as Ormond plays the character as if she’s on her last legs from frame one). (Forster seemed to treat Jacky mainly as a casualty of Edwardian-era colonial capitalism.) Leonard’s social aspirations and the Schegels’ do-gooder streak combine to produce a number of troublesome plot developments. He feels responsibility toward her, yet also plainly resents her as uncouth, a drag on him generally, and beyond the kind of evolution he seeks for himself. Leonard lives in a tiny apartment with his girlfriend Jacky (Rosalind Eleazar). Helen is overcome with emotion and bolts the instant the performance concludes, accidentally swiping Leonard’s umbrella, which of course necessitates Margaret contriving the circumstances of its return. The Basts enter the picture when young Leonard Bast (Joseph Quinn), a 20-year-old insurance clerk, attends a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the same row with Margaret, Helen, and their kid brother Tibby (Alex Lawther). Ruth impulsively wills the titular family estate to Margaret, believing that she will appreciate and care for it more diligently than her blood family. The Schlegels and the Wilcoxes met while vacationing in Germany, and while it seems as though the families’ trajectories will diverge after that, they remain intertwined thanks to Margaret becoming friends with Henry’s ailing wife, Ruth (Julia Ormond), after the Wilcoxes take a flat in London not far from the Schlegels. The letter in question is written by Helen Schlegel (Philippa Coulthard) to her older sister Margaret (Hayley Atwell), letting her know that she’s decided to break off her impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox (Jonah Hauer-King), son of industrialist Henry Wilcox (Matthew Macfadyen). This is a subtly audacious way to kick off a fresh version of a beloved story, and in the end, the production mostly delivers. Forster’s novel by screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan ( Manchester by the Sea) and director Hettie Macdonald ( Doctor Who), and airing over the next four Sundays on Starz. So writes a character in the new Howards End, a BBC mini-series adapted from E.M. “My darling sister, it isn’t going to be at all what was expected.” Photo: Laurie Sparham/Starz Entertainment, LLC
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