my expectations for the forsytes were low going in, given the absolute hash debbie horsfield made of poldark but bitch what, and i mean this to sting, the fuck? That woman never met a complex relationship she didn’t want to flatten into its blandest possible version but giving soames and irene the soft romance treatment is a whole new level of missing the entire goddamn point. Some decisions you cannot walk back.
I didn't read the book or see the prior adaptations, but I gather you see much sooner the toxicity of their relationship. Had I been a fan of the original I probably would have liked the new show less. As a stand alone work however, I actually liked the way Soames and Irene were portrayed, precisely because you don't necessarily see that shit coming.
As someone not in the know I had some doubts about long term viability but I didn't suspect it was going to where it was going. He had a reasonable plan that incorporated both their dreams for the future. He understood who she was going into their marriage. He supported her. He promised her an out. I get why Irene said yes. This why domestic abuse happens, because going into the relationship it can very much feel like a grand love story. That's what's so terrifying.
the thing is, it was never a grand love story. And that's the point. It isn't the point that debbie horsfield made, and if you weren't familiar with the forsytes then you took away from the new show exactly what it gave you. But that's not the story. It's not the story john galsworthy told and it's not the story any forsyte adaptation should tell.
the story of soames and irene isn't a story of abuse per se. Yes, their marriage is abusive. But the key point of their story is that they are fundamentally mismatched from the start and it was never about love. It wasn't about love for irene because she was pressured into it and it wasn't about love for soames because he is incapable of loving anything he doesn't own. Soames in the books is referred to as "the man of property" because for him, everything is about ownership. He wants to possess irene, he wants her to belong to him. He doesn't see her as a person, he sees her as a possession that he can buy and own because he's rich and that's his right. So he does "buy" her essentially, by setting her aunt up financially in exchange for her consent to marry him, but he never owns her in the way that he wants. Because she can't be owned. She's a free spirit and a very internal person. She keeps herself within herself in a place soames can never touch and that inability to fully possess this person he sees as his property drives him crazy and is what triggers his abusive behaviour. It's a fascinating and nuanced look at personhood and self and what it means to love and the lines between love and obsession.
this recent adaptation flattens that entirely and replaces it with a cookie-cutter abusive marriage storyline. The damage done to irene as a character is frankly criminal. Not to mention! the damage done to jolyon, my god. Young jolyon forsyte as played by rupert graves you will always be precious to me. This latest version is an impostor wearing your name.
anyway, tl;dr if debbie horsfield has no haters then i am dead, etc. No one does reductive, oversimplified soapy storytelling like her, raise a glass for nuanced characters murdered by her pen.
