`Nothing is more remote than the recent past," says Declan Kiberd in a special edition of RTE's books programme, Undercover, devoted to John McGahern tomorrow night, in advance of the new dramatisation of McGahern's classic novel Amongst Women. The author himself declares that: "It's a very dangerous thing to look back on any other time from our own time." What's true of literary fiction is 10 times more true of filmed drama, where broader strokes are needed, but where romantic cliche is a constant danger.
Like most of the substantial television drama made in Ireland over the past few years, the four-part series originated with BBC Northern Ireland, although the finished product is a co-production with the involvement of RTE, the Film Board and independent company Parallel Films. Filmed last autumn in Mayo and Dublin, this is a handsome-looking series which makes an honourable attempt to translate a wonderful book into another medium.
But McGahern's beautifully crafted, deeply affecting portrait of the Moran family, bound together by love, hate and fear of their tyrannical father (played here by Tony Doyle), seems like a tough nut to crack for the screen, a fact acknowledged by the BBC's Robert Cooper.
"Amongst Women was one of the toughest pieces of development we've ever undertaken," he says, describing the book as "an extraordinary portrait of an Irish family during the 1950s - a time of great moral turbulence in Ireland." The screenplay, written by Adrian Hodges (Tom And Viv, Metroland) and directed by Co Down-born Tom Cairns, significantly changes the emphasis of the novel, Cooper admits. "Michael Moran dominates in the book, but for the television adaptation we decided to give equal weight to the struggle of his sons and daughters to deal with Moran's extreme moral manipulation."
The three daughters, played by Susan Lynch, Geraldine O'Rawe and Anne Marie Duff, each react in their own different ways to the overbearing presence of their father. Lynch plays Maggie, the eldest daughter and surrogate mother following the death of Moran's wife. Duff is Sheila, whose dreams of becoming a doctor are thwarted by her father, and O'Rawe is Mona, the youngest and most sensitive of the three, and the one most damaged by Moran's domineering. Ger Ryan is excellent in her biggest television role since Roddy Doyle's Family. She plays Rose, who defies her own family to marry Moran, and brings maternal affection and warmth into the Moran household.
According to Adrian Hodges, Amongst Women was the hardest dramatic adaptation he has done. "I consider John's book a masterpiece, so it was a genuine labour of love. The story is intensely dramatic but that drama is very much based on everyday life. In order to make it feel big so it would work on the screen I aimed to capture the inner rhythms of that everyday life and the profound sense of how these people lived and exactly what were the complexities of each life."
There's something about the conventions of period drama - the well-polished antique vehicles, meticulous costumes and carefully-reconstructed interiors - that can reduce everything to the level of static visual tableaux, and rural Ireland of the 1950s has its own well-thumbed set of movie cliches.
Cathal Black's 1995 feature film of McGahern's short story Korea (another portrait of a tyrannical widowed father, played in that case by Donal Donnelly) faced the problem head-on, deploying layers of visual metaphor to evoke the turbulent passions raging below the surface of a fraught father-son relationship.
Under the direction of Cairns, Amongst Women is a rather more conventional piece of television drama. Tony Doyle brings his considerable experience as a screen actor to bear on the character of Moran, in a portayal which seems softer and more sympathetic than the book's.
It's a change which was probably necessary. As Kiberd notes: "Given that in many ways (McGahern) is a sad writer, it's surprising how one can come away from his work feeling uplifted. The skill and beauty of the language offers an amelioration." On film, some other form of amelioration was clearly needed, lest Moran become just a one-dimensional monster. "There is a powerful energy driving Moran," says Doyle of his character. "He is in control of his own tiny domain but there is a greater force at work that continually challenges him and his beliefs."
Amongst Women begins tomorrow night at 9.20 p.m. on RTE 1. UnderCOVER: John McGahern Special is at 6.25 p.m. also on RTE 1.
