Portrait of a Marriage
Portrait of a Marriageopens with deceptive calm-- a husband and wife working in a garden look up at planes flying overhead. But the planes are off to bomb Germany and moments later a phone call thrusts the wife--poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West (Janet McTeer,Tumbleweeds)--into a bittersweet reverie from the previous war.  Five years into her marriage with Harold Nicolson (David Haig,Two Weeks Notice), Harold confesses his affairs with men--but swears his only true passion is Vita. She accepts this, but when her childhood friend Violet Keppel (Cathryn Harrison,Clarissa) arrives, the two women begin an affair. Soon Vita and Violet find themselves deeply enmeshed, traveling through the gay demimonde of Paris with Vita in men's clothes. The affair becomes all-consuming and starts tearing at Vita and Harold's marriage and the lives of their two children.Portrait of a Marriagepractically bursts with revealing psychological details and startlingly steamy sex scenes--as Vita and Violet's relationship grows more carnal, so does the miniseries. But there's nothing casual or exploitive about it; the sex deepens the hold the women have on each other's hearts and leads to emotional pyrotechnics. The tension constantly thickens, made all the more complex because Vita and Harold genuinely love each other, regardless of their sexual longings. The vivid and meticulous recreation of the period frames the superb performances by McTeer, Harrison, and Haig. This four-episode miniseries from 1990, based on the biography by Vita and Harold's son Nigel, is yet another example of the BBC's mastery of literary adaptations.--Bret Fetzer