The Jewel in the Crown

Plot synopsis:
The serial opens in the 1940s during World War II in the fictional Indian city of Mayapore, against the backdrop of the last years of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement. Hari Kumar (Art Malik) is a young Indian man who was educated at 'Chillingborough', a British public school (the British term for an elite private school); he identifies as English rather than Indian. The bankruptcy of his father, a formerly successful businessman, forces him to return to India to live with his aunt.
Working as a journalist, Kumar sees that his position is lower in India, where he is discriminated against by many British colonists and held in some suspicion by Indian independence activists. He becomes involved with a British woman, Daphne Manners (Susan Wooldridge), who does not share the prejudices of most of her people. One night, after Hari and Daphne make love in the public Bibighar Gardens, at the same time that violent anti-British demonstrations are taking place elsewhere in the city, the couple are attacked by a group of unknown Indian men. Hari is beaten and Daphne is raped showing that not only the British opposed relationships across ethnic boundaries.
The local Indian Police superintendent is Ronald Merrick (Tim Pigott-Smith), a young Englishman who is intelligent, hardworking, and from a lower-class background. He had made advances to Daphne during her first months in India and been politely but firmly rebuffed. He arrests Hari for her rape, holding him in the local jail, where he beats and sexually humiliates him. Merrick resents Hari's privileged education and he resents Daphne's preferring the young Indian to him. Because Daphne refuses to cooperate with the investigation, the police do not prosecute Hari for rape but Merrick arrests Kumar and a group of young, educated Indians, sending them to prison for detention without trial under the security regulations adopted to deal with suppressing the Indian independence movement. Word that Hari was tortured causes outrage in the Indian community. Merrick is transferred from Mayapore to a smaller and less important town in the province.
Daphne learns she is pregnant. She chooses to believe the father is Hari, though she cannot know whether it is he or one of the rapists who is the father. She dies in childbirth. The mixed-race child, a girl, is taken in by Daphne's aunt, Lady Manners, widow of a former provincial governor. While Lady Manners takes the infant to the resort area of Srinagar, she meets Sarah Layton, a young British woman on vacation with her mother and her sister Susan. Sarah and Susan's father is the colonel of the Indian Army regiment in Pankot, a hill station near Mayapore. He is being held as a prisoner of war in Germany, where his unit was captured. Susan and their mother prefer to stay away from Lady Manners due to the scandal of her great-niece's illegitimate birth, but Sarah pays a call on Lady Manners and the two women become friendly.
Sarah and her family soon encounter Merrick, who has left the police and procured a commission in the Indian Army. Teddie Bingham (Nicholas Farrell), an Indian Army officer and the fiancé of Sarah's sister Susan, is stationed in the nearby princely state of Mirat; Merrick, also assigned there, happens to share quarters with him. Because the unit is soon to leave for the border with Burma, Teddie and Susan have to marry in Mirat. When Teddie's best man for the ceremony becomes ill, he asks Merrick to step in. Merrick, seeing a relationship with the upper-class Teddie and the Laytons as a means to career advancement, is pleased to help. While Merrick and Teddie are driving to the ceremony a stone is thrown at their car, slightly injuring Teddie. Merrick understands that he was the target of the attack, as this is one of a series of incidents suggesting he is being harassed because of his treatment of Kumar and the other suspects in the Manners case in Mayapore.
Soon after the wedding Teddie and Merrick leave for the Burma front with their unit. Teddie is soon killed in an ambush by soldiers of the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army (INA). Merrick is badly wounded trying to get Teddie to safety and is evacuated to a hospital in Calcutta. When Sarah visits him (at Susan's request) to thank him, she learns that his arm is to be amputated and that his face will be permanently disfigured by burn scars. Merrick reveals to Sarah that Teddie was ambushed because of him. Teddie had left their unit to try to persuade two Indian soldiers of his regiment, who had been captured by the Japanese and joined the INA, to surrender and come in. Merrick believes Teddie took this risk to prove to him that the Indian soldiers, even after becoming turncoats, would resume their loyalty to the British if given the chance. Faced with losing his arm and being left permanently disfigured, Merrick's hostility against Indians has increased.
Lady Manners presses to gain a formal inquiry into the arrest and detention of Hari Kumar. It is conducted by Nigel Rowan (Nicholas Le Prevost) an aide to the governor of the province. Only during the interview does Hari learn that Daphne is dead. After Rowan establishes that Hari was tortured by Merrick and there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by him, he arranges the young man's release from prison. No action is taken against Merrick, however.
After his convalescence, Merrick is promoted and assigned to intelligence activities concerning the INA and Indian soldiers who collaborated with the enemy. He comes across the Laytons again in Bombay, where Sarah is reunited with her father, Colonel Layton, just released from a German POW camp following Germany's surrender. Merrick is there to interrogate an Indian soldier who had served under Colonel Layton and assisted the Germans after Layton's unit was captured, and who has been deported to India. Merrick gains assistance from Sergeant Guy Perron (Charles Dance), a young Cambridge graduate and Indian history scholar, who was serving with an Intelligence Corps Field Security unit; he speaks fluent Urdu and is asked to observe the interrogation. Merrick learns that Perron also attended Chillingborough, and happened to know Hari Kumar when they were students.
After the interrogation, Perron runs into Merrick and Sarah Layton by chance at a party. He accompanies them to the apartment of Layton's aunt, where Sarah and her father are staying temporarily. Sarah and Perron are attracted to each other. Merrick decides to have Perron assigned to assist him in further investigations of Indian soldiers who became collaborators. Perron and Sarah both find Merrick distasteful, but Perron has no choice but to work with him.
After the death of her husband Teddie and the difficult birth of their son, the young widow Susan Layton Bingham suffers a mental breakdown and is treated in a hospital in Pankot. When Merrick returns to the Pankot area while working on his inquiry into collaborators, he starts to court Susan and ultimately marries her. Perron later learns that Merrick blackmailed a young British hospital clerk into giving him access to Susan's medical records, apparently to learn about her mental state and use this material to persuade her to marry him. Her sister Sarah dislikes Merrick and is opposed to the marriage, but she is unable to stop it.
With the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the war in the East is ended, and the days of British rule in India are clearly numbered. Perron arranges a quick exit from the Army and returns to Cambridge and his academic career. Due to his imminent departure, he and Sarah must suspend their relationship. The Layton parents plan to return to England. Merrick intends to stay on, having gotten a contract from the government of Mirat to reorganize their police force.
In 1947, with the transition to Indian independence under way, Perron returns to India as an historian to observe the process. Visiting Mirat at the invitation of its Chief Minister, Count Bronowsky, whom he met briefly on his last trip to Bombay, Perron learns that Merrick has died, apparently as a result of a riding accident. The situation in Mirat is tense due to conflict between Hindus and Muslims related to independence. Bronowsky tells Perron the real story behind Merrick's death. He relates that Merrick died in the course of a sexual rendezvous with a young Indian man who was probably employed by independent activists and who was believed to have let in an assassin who killed Merrick. The authorities cover up the details of Merrick's death, fearing reprisals from the Indians in this time of political uncertainty regarding British departure. The two discuss their view that, in leaving India, the British are opening up "Pandora's Box," releasing the ancient competition for power between the Hindus and Muslims, who had earlier conquered and ruled the country. Some confrontations had been restrained by the power of the British as rulers.
Sarah, Susan and their aunt attend Merrick's funeral in Mirat. Perron decides to accompany them on the train back to Pankot. Joining them is Ahmed Kasim, the educated son of a prominent Muslim politician who has been working for Bronowsky in Mirat for the past few years. En route to Pankot, the train is stopped by a gang of Hindus, who attack Muslim passengers in retaliation for recent attacks on Hindus in Mirat. The attackers demand that Kasim be turned over to them. Before his fellow passengers can react, Kasim voluntarily leaves the train car and surrenders himself to the attackers, who murder him. Perron, Sarah and the other English passengers are unharmed, but are horrified by the slaughter of Kasim and other passengers.
Before leaving India again, Perron visits Hari Kumar, now living in a poor neighborhood and supporting himself by tutoring Indian students in English. He leaves his card as Kumar is out. Perron reflects on how Kumar was caught in an impossible position, between England and India.

Tags: revenge, murder, flashback

Review:
I loved The Jewel In The Crown and highly recommend it!
I think it's a very skillful and successful adaptation for TV from fiction.My own views about this series have changed -- from good to better.
I realize now that I watched it then very literally, very matter-of-fact, and saw it mostly as a straightforward series of events in the lives of these people trying to cope with the turmoil of the last days of the British in India.
I viewed it mostly as a sort of soap opera.Recently I read all four of the books from which this story was taken, and what an illumination!
There are scenes in this movie that I'll never forget, in the same way the characters are haunted by them.Instead of a meandering and random soap opera, I saw how event built upon event, how characters affected one another, how chance meetings changed lives, how it all slouched inexorably towards the climax -- or anticlimax -- of the devastating conclusion.I am amazed at the skillfulness of the screenplay -- to compress those four novels and all their layers of complexity into this TV series.
(If you like pat answers, steer clear of this one.)I loved this series, I intend to buy the videos, and I highly recommend it..
There's a small scene in the first 2 hour episode of Jewel in the Crown about 80 minutes in.
The obsessional loving care and artistry that is evident in just this single minute tell you everything you need to know about the quality of Jewel in the Crown.
The set and the lighting on the sleeping figure momentarily transforms the character who will later be known, pejoratively as "that Manners girl" into the Diana-like beauty she always imagined she would become.
A great piece of acting by Wooldridge, never surpassed or even approached by all the other actors and actresses who have had to play this popular little scene, present in so many other movies.
I've watched it a number of times and I never want it to end.It really is the best drama series ever made..
Those who have said that the British characters were too reserved and meandering are quite correct - it is how British people were and definitely how they were portrayed in Paul Scotts original book.
Tim Pigott Smith was just beautiful with his sadistic menacing Ronald Merrick  who definitely goes top on my list of all time favourites.
The whole piece when watched one after the other definitely gives the sense of time and place which - living in modern times it is often easy to lose sight of.
Thumbs up to all the cast I feel that the acting from all members was superb.As the show progresses the viewer gets gradually enveloped and involved in the lives of these people the thing to remember about this piece is that it is not necessarily the action which enhances the show but more importantly the psychological development of every single character ( maybe with the exception on Aunt Fenny - funny but was only there for convenience - to introduce Sarah to Jimmy the soldier).
The wonderful way in which strands of plot are woven throughout the series in new and interesting ways, the eternally memorable characters, the fascinating background of historical events, the series' sympathy to people of every age, social and economic background, the charm of many of the protagonists.Even the more minor characters are just drawn so well.
Thus, one of my favorite characters in all of television is that of Nigel Rowan - who is wonderfully portrayed by Nicholas LePrevost; one of my least favorite is the major to whom Sarah is introduced by her aunt and uncle.Such historical episodes as the decision by the princely states of India whether to accede to the newly independent India - or the creation of an Axis army by Indians who had been taken captive by Germans or Japanese -- these stories are engrossing and not so well known among those of us in the United States not well versed in recent Indian history.The series is spellbinding - one cares greatly about these people and what happens to them is very interesting indeed.
The symbolism in the series deepens one's sense of the mood of the time, of the tragedy, of the ocean in which these characters swim.I can't imagine a better series adapted from more wonderful books..
The acting is magnificent, the story is fascinating and the characters are so real that one thinks that one is actually watching a documentary about the final days of the Raj. It is a marvelous adaptation, not a spare scene and it is beautifully directed.
Given the current vapid and stupid landscape of American and British television, "The Jewel in the Crown" is THE exemplar of the height of drama..
There are many fine performances in this piece including Susan Wooldridge (Daphne Manners), Art Malik (Hari Kumar), Tim Pigott-Smith (Merrick), Geraldine James (Sarah Layton), Judy Parfitt (Mildred Layton), Dame Peggy Ashcroft (Barbie Bachelor), and Charles Dance (Guy Peron).
It is these performances which keep the piece moving in the "less interesting" parts.In fact, I think it is the persona of Sarah Layton played by Geraldine James that makes the middle part of the series really go.
The world was well painted as full of turmoil for the British Raj whose rule in India was ending during the chaos of WWII.Definitely worth watching.
With a powerfully moving script, it tells the story of the complex relationship between the British and Indian people at the end of British rule of the subcontinent.
Yes, it does tend to drag during the first three or four episodes but anyone who's read 'The Raj Quartet' would realize that the book is just so - several seemingly unrelated events taking place in a larger political context.
The series was definitely better than the books and effectively recreated the political milieu of the time.
The haunting story of Paul Scott's THE RAJ QUARTET brought to the screen with flawless acting and character interpretation.
While the story is not a pleasant one, the screenplay captures the scope of the problems created by nearly 300 years of British presence in India.
Peggy Ashcroft, Fabia Drake, Judy Parfitt, Art Malik and above all Tim Pigott-Smith, to mention but a very few of the cast, create memorable characters that come alive on the screen and will live on in your memories.
I think I've seen the whole series about 7 or 8 times, and I see something new each time.The Jewel in the Crown tells the story of individual people trying to live their lives in a world in the process of changing beyond recognition.
You really believe that these people lived in this extraordinary time, the beginning of the end of the British Empire.
I actually think that the series is better than the sum of the books, but nothing beats the first book in the series (The Jewel in the Crown) as a stand-alone novel.
Similar to the film Rashomon (or Courage Under Fire), the novel Jewel in the Crown tells a story from every point of view except one.
Maybe today this theory doesn't stand up too well but The Jewel in the Crown is one of the most beautifully written and performed pieces of work that the current generations could hope for.
It was brave of Yorkshire Television to take on a filmed adaptation of Paul Scott's massive novel 'The Jewel in the Crown'.
The jarring complexities of "old" India rubbing up against the modernizing influences of the British Raj is vividly conveyed, mostly in the smaller, quieter moments, as when Harry Kumar takes Daphne Manners to visit his aunt and the behavior of the servants and the Rajput princess with whom Daphne is living.It's true that there is a great deal of dialog, in a soap opera-ish sense.
There are times in some of the later episodes when I thought I was watching some bit of trash on TV on a Wednesday afternoon, but then I'd focus in on what the characters were saying and realize that it was deep and important stuff.
His character makes me wish for a great film of the true story of the White Russians who had to flee the Bolsheviks in the first two decades of the 20th century, for such disparate places as India, Paris and Manchuria.
The plot (greatly simplified here!) revolves about a number of English expatriots living in India at the time of the Raj and during the difficult struggle for independence.
The acting is superb, particularly Peggy Ashcroft; and as in so many British productions, great care is taken to cast brilliant actors in even the smallest of roles.The many characters' lives intersect in the most surprising ways, there are regular dollops of action and violence--this is riveting television!
I remember receiving only a sound broadcast for one episode--no picture--and I sat by the screen for the full hour in rapt attention.There is much to learn about human nature, both the dark and the joyful, and about the politics of imperialism, and about an awe-inspiring country and culture, from this beautifully crafted series.
The Jewel in the Crown is in my opinion one of the best series ever.
The acting is superb and contrary to many comments here, quite genuine, certain British people WERE like that.
What is hilarious, however, is reading some comments posted here as if all stories should follow a strictly "physical-action-sequence" of A kills B and jealous C falls in love with D, but in the end all marry and are happy ever after.
Thanks to BBC, Granada and others, there are series and films that make us interpret, feel and think beyond what we see on the screen or else we'll all end up left watching "Th Incredible Hulk".
This mammoth series does a beautiful job of bringing Paul Scott's novels 'The Raj Quartet' to the screen.The scene is the period of time at the end of the British Raj, the characters are well drawn and believable (particularly Tim Pigott-Smith as the racist and intolerant Captain Merrick, a complex character, and Art Malik as the intellectual Indian Hari Kumar).
Scott's novel was an engrossing read and 'Jewel' does it proud.One of those series which goes in all sorts of different directions before it comes to its moving and surprising conclusion.
Did these people really watch the series??
(True that Ronald Merrick is stereotyped, but this is how he is in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, the books on which the series is based -- well worth reading.) The love story of Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar is poignant and lovely, and it is an interesting foil for the other "love stories" that follow (Susan and her husband, Sarah and the soldier, Sarah and Guy, Mildred and the colonel) -- all pale considerably.
This very well written adaptation of Paul Scott's "The Raj Quartet" demonstrates the quality of British TV Drama.
Saw the TV series first and then read all 4 books of the Raj Quartet.
I recommend the books and the series highly to anyone interested in history.
The line "there's nothing I can do" appears over and over again to portray the impossibility of standing in the way of the change about to come over India.Scott did a superb job of portraying the Raj, the Muslims, the Hindus, the English air of superiority and the class system of the English, all the while depicting the end of the Raj and the beginning of the new India.It is also a feast for the eyes, showing many beautiful locations in India and depicting the railroad travel of the day in a fascinating way..
If any fault at all, the characters could have been even more developed than this mini-series did them, and there could have been more explaination of some of the traditions of the Indian people.
(like the Sutee scene.) Over all I enjoyed this series and rewatch and pick up new things every couple of years..
We get only hints at the fate of Hari Kumar, and it's very frustrating that Merrick is not exposed and Sarah never learns the truth about him.It's hard to keep track of the countless new characters that wander in and out for no apparent reason, mumbling meaningless dialogue that adds nothing to the storyline.
Nobody behaves the way people behave in real life, even if you account for the time period.The problem with watching this on DVD is no subtitles so I couldn't make out about 20% of the dialogue.
I had long heard of this program (never read any reviews) and had also always liked period pieces set in India, so I gave it a shot.
This movie is supposed to be about a British family living in India.
Based on the book "The Raj Quartet."  Mini series is way too long.
You definitely see a lack of the British intervening with Indians; ironically, British are ruling in India at this time, yet they don't know how to live in it.
You notice Mrs.Layton cannot even take care of her own two girls; if they don't know how to be parents to their own families, how prepared are they to actually rule India?Many themes/symbolisms are pointed out within the movie.
To add insult to injury, the new DVD reissue comes without closed captions for the hearing impaired and for Americans, like me, who can't follow the low decibel mumbling of most contemporary British actors.I recently stumbled on a tape of an episode that I must have accidentally recorded off of TV almost 20 years ago.
That episode was of some interest because it starred Charles Dance, who played a World War II Sargent caught in interesting soap opera like situations.
I did not know that the first episode starring Charles Dance starts approximately 500 minutes into the movie.
Other than the capable portrayal of a powerful, evil character by Timothy Pigott-Smith, very little of interest happens before Mr. Dance appears.
At first it seems that Mr. Pigott will portray the main character, however he gets limited screen time during the middle half of the movie, a poor decision.Seemingly endless segments are taken up with boring dialogue between a group of arrogant, self centered, passive dependent British women with politically powerful connections.
TV is not the same as a novel: faithfulness just cheapens both.The revered action is stiff, unreal, theatrical, terrible (Charles Dance, Art Malik and Susan Woodbridge are honourable exceptons), or amusingly daft (Tim Piggot-Smith - could anyone like Merrick possibly have existed?)  The first and last episodes are misleadingly excellent, because they break with the rules of the series by concentrating on action, rather than character, which in this series is a joke, because every character is a ludicrous stereotype.As is usual in colonial dramas from the colonisers' viewpoint, the politics, however well-meaning, are compromised - non-white characters are marginalised unless they went to public school.
Listening to Alistair Cooke describing the effects of the Granada production on the British television audience at the time, however, didn't help me overcome my almost immediate and subsequent thirteen-week-long disappointment.
Forty years after the demise of the Raj, the series perhaps evoked a nostalgia for the lost empire to British audiences.
Not knowing anything about the book, I was expecting this celebrated PBS series to be somewhat like a longer variation of the excellent David Lean movie Passage to India.
While it did give me valuable glimpses into the British Raj, the class tensions between the British and the Indians (and between the British themselves), and the history of the period, the overall effect on me when the series ended was depression.And I did not enjoy the portrayals of rape, brutality, torture, insanity, homosexuality, etc.
After watching Jewel in the Crown, I now realize the decline had began much earlier - at least as early as 1984, when this series was broadcast..
A crowning jewel of a series....one to see before it is too late.
How will over "three hundred years" of British rule in India end?
If you have any interest whatsoever in the history of the world, or in the basic struggle of the human race, you should make time for this monumental series, as soon as possible.
Arguably the best television series ever made, it captures perfectly the spirit of the novel and the time in which it takes place, a time in which the British were slowly losing India without properly realizing it till it was too late.
Especially the first episode with the tender love scene between Susan Wooldridge and Art Malik (both utterly fantastic) is superb and not until much much later does the horrid truth about what happened that night occur to us.
I really wanted to love this series, and at first, It drew me in for the first few episodes, but then after that and by the ending, I was left with a feeling of lack of tying in of the story.
We begin the story with a set of characters that then changes.
New characters are introduced, such as miss manners aunt, but then later on, there is really no tie in at the end.
I didn't read the novels, so I have no idea how true to the novels the series is, but I was completely let down by the second half and feel I wasted hours of my life watching it..
Excellent Depiction of the Last Days of British India.
You do not see series like this anymore.The Plot is superb, the actors are fantastic, and the "Last Days of the Empire atmosphere" is actually very good.If you are looking for some action, this is not your TV serial.
Funny enough, the British torturer is a repressed homosexual who enjoys inflicting pain and gets relief having sex with young Indian guys "Bazaar Style".Terry Porter as the Russian Count is by far the best character of the whole series.