A Room With A View @ The UK TV Archive

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A ROOM WITH A VIEW

This Sunday 4 November on ITV1 @ 9.00pm sees Timothy Spall and his son Rafe appearing together for the first time as father and son in a new adaptation of EM Forster’s A Room With A View.

Timothy (Death Defying Acts, Mysterious Creatures) and Rafe (Hot Fuzz, The Chatterley Affair) play Mr Emerson and his son George in an adaptation by Andrew Davies' (Bleak House, The Line of Beauty) of Forster’s classic social comedy.

Elaine Cassidy (Ghost Squad, Fingersmith) is Lucy Honeychurch, Laurence Fox (Lewis, Becoming Jane) is Cecil Vyse, Sophie Thompson (EastEnders, A Harlot’s Progress) is Charlotte Bartlett, Sinead Cusack (The Tiger’s Tail, Home Again) is Miss Lavish, Timothy West (Bleak House, London) is Mr Eager and Mark Williams (Stardust, Harry Potter) is the Reverend Beebe.

This is a fresh look at this classic romantic comedy by E.M. Forster about the awakening of an impressionable English girl on a trip to Florence. This new interpretation of the story is poignantly framed by Lucy’s nostalgic return to Italy after the First World War.

1922, Florence. Lucy Honeychurch (Elaine Cassidy) has returned to relive her first visit there years before. She finds the pensione where she once stayed and we flash back to:

Florence 1912. Lucy, heavily chaperoned by her anxious cousin Charlotte Bartlett (Sophie Thompson), arrives at the Pensione Bertolini looking for adventure. Instead she finds herself in an eccentric enclave of English tourists including elderly spinsters, clergymen, and more dangerously, the socialist Mr Emerson (Tim Spall) and his loose-cannon of a son, George (Rafe Spall). When Lucy explores the streets alone, she witnesses a fight in which a man dies. When she faints, it’s George Emerson who rescues her and sparks fly.

On a picnic excursion to the countryside, the young coachman Paolo (Yari Gugliucci) attracts attention - he’s brought his girlfriend along, pretending she’s his sister. She is summarily despatched by the supercilious Reverend Eager (Timothy West). When Lucy finds herself separated from the rest of the party, she asks Paolo where the clergymen are, but in her poor Italian, she actually asks him how to find the “good men”. Paolo directs her towards George Emerson, who kisses her passionately in the middle of a poppy field. Lucy is profoundly shocked, but also very excited.

Her chaperone Charlotte whisks her away to Rome, where they stay with the elegant Cecil Vyse (Laurence Fox) at his holiday villa. Cecil proposes to Lucy and she accepts. Back in the UK, at her family home in Surrey, George turns up and it isn’t long before he kisses her again and declares his love, urging her not to marry Cecil.

Lucy’s quandary escalates until she breaks off with both men, but before she can embrace her cousin Charlotte’s fate as a spinster, Mr Emerson kindly explains her muddled feelings to her…obviously, she loves his son. George and Lucy come together at last – and enjoy an ecstatic honeymoon in Florence – in their old room with a view…

A Room With A View is produced by Eileen Quinn and Dave Edwards (Fallen Angel) and directed by Nicholas Renton (Wives and Daughters, Uncle Adolf)

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