Who better to adapt one of Trollope's gossipy, class-fixated 19th Century tomes than Downton's Julian Fellowes? This in fact occupies the same 9pm, Sunday-night ITV slot lately vacated by the Crawleys, so don't expect a risk-taking, rule-breaking adaptation. Instead we get a decent cast and a handsomely-mounted hour introducing us to the eponymous Dr Thorne (Tom Hollander - confusingly the camp, bitchy Corkoran over on BBC1 at the same time) and his illegitimate niece Mary, who is in love with the handsome young squire at the big house. He returns that love, but alas has no money and must marry it. Could there be a chance that Mary's unacknowledged other uncle will bestow a fortune on her...? Fans of Trollope's novels will be either delighted or disappointed in the adaptation, but for the rest of us all that can be said is that it competently covers familiar ground.
Tom Hollander is a genius. He bears no more than a passing resemblance to poet Dylan Thomas, and to most viewers is more familiar in a dog collar as 'Rev', but within fifteen minutes is utterly convincing and, more, sympathetic as the gifted, spoiled, self-pitying alcoholic. This takes his Big Apple trip in 1953 which proves to be his last, and interweaves just enough of his prime moments in life to give a real sense of the intense feelings that drove him to sublime heights of verse and terrible lows at the bottom of several bottles. When it comes to drink and women, he just can't seem to help himself, and his fame and charm give him abundant access to both, much to the anger of his wife in Laugharne, Caitlin, and his mistress in New York. This recreates early '50s NY on probably a fraction of 'Mad Men's budget and while some of the accents stray eastwards of the Atlantic and even of Wales, this remains a beguiling 80 minutes, and a fitting tribute to a flawed, fabulously gifted man who died at only 39.
