When you hear about a production like Howards End, which originally aired last year in the UK and just finished its four-part American run on Starz, you assume you know what to expect. There will probably be a very stiff and stately air to everything. Characters will be wearing fancy, finely tailored costumes. And of course, there will mostly likely be lots of blustering about matters of propriety, inheritance, and who's going to marry whom. So it would be understandable if somebody saw a promo for Howards End, figured they had seen everything it had to offer, and decided to give it a pass. But doing so would be a huge mistake, because they'd be missing out on one of the most remarkable pieces of television to air so far this year.
The miniseries comes with an extra pile of "been there done that" baggage. Not only is it based on a classic novel that many people read in school, there is also a beloved Merchant-Ivory film adaptation (which notably won Emma Thompson an Oscar for her performance). I'll admit that I've never read the book or seen the Merchant-Ivory film -- both of which I plan to rectify soon -- so that could be lending to my feelings of goodwill towards this latest adaptation, but it feels so fresh and unlike anything else I've ever watched.
All four parts of the series are written by Kenneth Lonergan and directed by Hettie MacDonald. Many may know Lonergan from his extensive work as a playwright and his three excellent films You Can Count on Me, Margaret, and Manchester By the Sea. In both media, he's applauded for his ability to create deeply human characters and scenarios, reveling in realistic dialogue that reveals the core of those people. You can see it in the way he brings this version of the story to life as well.
Howards End is the story of the oddly intertwining lives of the Wilcoxes, Schlegels, and Basts, three families who all hail from different economic and intellectual strata but find themselves inescapably in each other's orbit. That is to say, it does contain many of the tropes one has come to expect from these kind of Victorian-era tales of social status. But the Starz miniseries also feels radically spritely for its genre. The look of the show may be lush and languishing, yet its energy comes from how it sounds. Every dialogue exchange has a brightness and bounce to it, somehow balancing witticisms with character building information. Most of that can be credited to Forster's source material, but Lonergan and MacDonald do wonders with the pace of the words spoken, letting them overlap and spill out in unexpected ways.
Perhaps the greatest work the language of this adaptation does is capture the warmth between the Schlegel siblings. So much of the miniseries' runtime is devoted to observing Margaret, Helen, and Tibby in their downtime together at their home in London, and it's some of the most authentic sibling interaction that's ever graced the screen. Those scenes have a wonderful lived-in quality, and even in moments where the sisters are expressing annoyance at their kid brother Tibby, it feels rooted in a deep sense of love and history. Part of the credit is owed to the actors, who all give assured and lively performances. Alex Lawther knows how to milk Tibby's peevishness for maximum laughs, and Philippa Coulthard imbues Helen with a naive optimism that's both endearing and frustrating, but it's Hayley Atwell who steals the show here. She's so present and engaging here as the open-hearted, fiery, progressive Margaret, commanding the ability to convey so many complex emotions with just the flick of a facial expression. With these actors at the center, you'll want to spend forever with the Schlegels.
That time investment pays off in the home stretch of the miniseries, when complicated circumstances arise and drive Margaret and Helen apart. Because the show attaches us so much to these characters, the stakes of their minor schism feels absolutely world-ending. By the end, I wanted everything to work out for them so badly that my heart hurt.
That ability to wring big emotions out of relatively small events extends to the major conflict between the families as well. Watching the conservative Wilcox worldview clash with the progressive Schlegel mindset, and the ways they manage to bridge the gap between their ideologies through empathy, kindness, and understanding, is riveting and moving all at once. (And in this day and age, it feels like a downright aspirational fantasy.) Howards End makes the case for the importance of humanity in storytelling. Sometimes you don't need cataclysmic events to make an impact on the viewer, you can just start with real emotions and let the drama take its natural course. It's a lesson that so many shows and films could stand to learn.
