[Dixielandjazz] Forsyte Saga - Set to a Jazz Beat?

[Stephen Barbone]

List mates

Not sure about the "music" in this Saga, but it might be worth checking
out, even if you are not A Forsyte Fan. Below review is snipped for
brevity.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

February 6, 2004 - New York Times

TV WEEKEND | 'THE FORSYTE SAGA II'

Stiff Upper Lips Set to a Jazz Age Beat

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

        Members of the English upper class wriggling to ragtime in
evening clothes can be an alarming sight. But there are few more
effective ways of
conveying the decline of the British Empire after World War I. The
discomfiture, the yearning to keep spirits as blithe as they never
really were and the undignified scramble to adapt to a faster, alien
rhythm are all telegraphed in a few incongruous dance steps.

That England is the setting for Series II of the "The Forsyte Saga," a
beguiling three-part mini-series that begins Sunday on "Masterpiece
Theater" on PBS. Or at least it is England as Soames Forsyte (Damian
Lewis) views it from his bitter, sidelined perspective. (SNIP)

"The Forsyte Saga," be it this version by Granada Television of England
and WGBH in Boston or the 26-part black-and-white BBC series shown on
PBS
in 1969, is almost as impossible to dislike as "Gone With the Wind" or
the Harry Potter books. But Series II, which ends with Fleur's marriage,
makes it a
little easier, partly because tragic love triangles, when repeated in a
second generation, tend to verge on farce.

World War I, which had just ended at the time of the lovers' meeting, is
alluded to only elliptically, mostly as a reflection of a character's
moral compass.
When Soames complains that the war "changed everything," he is referring
to the vulgarity of low necklines and women riding horses astride,
beggars on
the streets and shopgirls with "short skirts and common airs."  (SNIP)

This Fleur is lovely, and at times bewitchingly bad, but she is more
classically beautiful than the one played by Susan Hampshire in the BBC
mini-series.
Her looks are lushly Edwardian, and she looks best in clothes and
settings of her father's choosing — silk gowns and candlelit ballrooms.
The camera
almost seems to be begging her to change her silly, unflattering flapper
clothes and sit still for a Sargent portrait. (SNIP)

THE FORSYTE SAGA II
Sunday nights on most PBS stations in the USA (check local listings).
Starts This Sunday.