On The Tube

`Daniel Deronda'

PBS presents a look at 19th-century British Jewry
in TV adaptation of George Eliot novel.

whose daughter lives in Beersheva.
n a key scene in ExxonNlobil
"His return to his roots perhaps
Masterpiece Theatre's production
moved
her to create Deronda, a man
of Daniel Deronda, adapted from
also
struggling
to return to his roots."
George Eliot's 1876 novel and
Eliot's novel charts a love story set in
coming to public television March 30-
Victorian high society. Daniel is in
31, the hero attends a Zionist meeting.
love with his soul mate, Gwendolen
"Isn't the way forward through
Harleth (Romola Garai). Though
assimilation?" asks Deronda (Hugh
entranced
with Daniel, Gwendolen is
Dancy), an orphaned aristocrat unsure
forced
into
an oppressive marriage to
of his roots.
Henleigh
Grandcourt
(Hugh
"When we pretend to be what we
Bonneville), while Daniel finds a new
are not, we lose a bit of our souls,"
life through his friendship with Jewish
Mordecai, a Jewish mystic, replies.
singer Mirah Lapidoth (Jodhi May).
If the early Zionist movement seems
Daniel goes in search of Mirah's
an unlikely topic for a Victorian novel,
family
and finds himself drawn into
Eliot (Middlemarch, Silas Marner) was
an unlikely Victorian novelist.
"She raised eyebrows," said
Deronda's Jewish producer, Louis
Marks, who spearheaded the
teledrama with screenwriter
Andrew Davies.
Born Mary Ann Evans, Eliot
began shocking people when she
-rejected Christianity at age 22,
according to Marks. She was fur-
ther shunned when she moved in
with her married lover in 1854.
Although she was the unoffi-
cial editor of the influential
Westminster Review, she was
Hugh Dancy as Daniel Deronda and Jodhi
never publicly acknowledged
May
as Mirah Lapidoth in "Daniel Deronda."
because she was a woman. In
1859, she began publishing a
string of acclaimed, socially conscious
the world of London's Jewish commu-
novels under the pseudonym George
nity, where he meets Mordecai. When
Eliot.
Her final novel was Deron da, an epic Daniel shows an interest in Jewish his-
tory, Mordecai becomes convinced
love story of a young adopted man's
that Daniel is also Jewish and has been
search for his family and his Jewish
chosen
to be a leader of their people.
heritage. "As an outsider, she identified
Marks
said the novel inspired early
with the Jewish experience of oppres-
Zionist
leaders
such as Eliezer Ben-
sion," Marks said.
Yehuda and aristocrats who backed
"She was outraged and disgusted by
Britain's Balfour Declaration, the first
the degree of anti-Semitism that exist-
political recognition of Zionism.
ed in English society," said Davies,
With war erupting in the Middle
Marks' longtime collaborator.
East,
he believes its message is equally
Eliot began writing Deronda after
relevant
today. "Many people are wor-
befriending the German-born scholar
ried
about
Israel's survival, and
Emmanuel Deutsch, the prototype for
Deronda makes people aware of what
the fictional Mordecai.
An official in the Jewish manuscripts is at stake," he said. ❑
department of the British Museum, he
Daniel Deronda airs in two parts
taught Eliot Hebrew and about the
and will be shown 10 p.m.
then-nascent idea of Zionism. When
Sunday and Monday, March 30-
he was diagnosed with terminal cancer
31, on Detroit Public Television-
in the 1870s, he went off to die in
Channel 56.
Jerusalem.
"That inspired Eliot," said Marks,

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