Sex Outdoors
The first of Andrew Davies’ three-part adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Line of Beauty, premiered on BBC2 last night. Thus far, all of the sex scenes–in typical Hollinghurst fashion–have been same sex, mixed race and out of doors. Ah, the world of Hollinghurst’s prose, where gay sex is as plentiful as the air we breathe and can happen anywhere, anytime. (Which is probably why we never hear the over-50 Hollinghurst or the 40-something, equally amorous Jake Arnott, joining the ranks of other over-40 British queer media types like the pathetic and undignified Graham Norton and Simon Fanshawe, who complain in their recent tellie doc, The Trouble With Gay Men, that no one will date them and they can’t get laid.) So Hollinghurst it is.
The series is a very faithful adaptation of the novel which traces the coming of age of a young Oxford don who rises through the heights of London’s social and political classes when he becomes the lodger of Tory MP Gerald Fetton and his family in Notting Hill at the height of Thatcher’s reign, post-Fauklands War. The lodger is appropriately named Nick Guest. The period is also distinctive, of course, because it is the age of AIDS and also the period in which Hollinghurst set his first novel, another story of sexual awakening, The Swimming Pool Library.
Thus far, the highlight of this series is the young actress, Hayley Atwell (pictured with Dan Stevens as Nick Guest). She has a plum role as the bi-polar, self-harming Catherine Fetton, daughter of Gerald. With her posh accent and bohemian ways, Atwell effortlessly conjures thoughts of Audrey Hepburn, circa Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), which may have been what Hollinghurst had in mind all along.
In keeping with the period, the first episode also featured New Order’s Blue Monday, Duran Duran’s Planet Earth and, of course, Spandau Ballet’s True.
The Line of Beauty continues through Wednesday, 31st of May. A replay of the first episode is available online through BBC Broadband here (access may be restricted). The BBC mini-site with an episode guide, cast of characters, biographies, galleries, desktop wallpapers and such can be found here.
