Sumptuous and very promising: A Suitable Boy reviewed

Nobody could argue that Andrew Davies isn’t up for a challenge. He’d also surely be a shoo-in for Monty Python’s Summarise Proust competition. After turning both War and Peace and Les Misérables into satisfying, unhurried six-part drama series, he’s now taken on Vikram Seth’s 1,300-page novel A Suitable Boy.

The first episode started with a wedding that immediately established the programme’s visual sumptuousness, while also serving as a handy introduction to the main characters. The groom’s rebellious brother Maan, for example, chafed at the idea that he was supposed to be next. The bride’s spirited sister Lata protested that the newly weds hardly knew each other, before hearing the chilling words from her mother: ‘You too will marry a man I choose.’ We learned as well about the political situation in 1951 in India, where the action takes place. With Partition still raw, there was much talk among mustachioed middle-aged men about Hindu-Muslim relations. And, from that overture, Davies then moved on to display his usual plate-spinning efficiency as he shuttled between the different nascent plotlines.

Many people — including the author himself — have noted Seth’s debt to Jane Austen, with Lata an Indian equivalent of Elizabeth Bennet and her marriage-obsessed mother in the role of Mrs B. These days, though, there’s another, more unexpected resemblance: to a chaste version (if such a thing can be imagined) of Normal People. At her university, Lata discussed the works of James Joyce with a friend. Soon afterwards, she connected excitingly with a handsome fellow student over poetry and accompanied him to the meeting of a literary society. But if the sexual side of their relationship was duly restricted to her looking on yearningly as he played cricket — and, right at the end, a daring kiss — the couple certainly trump Marianne and Connell when it comes to social divisions, because she’s Hindu and he’s Muslim.