THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

GORMENGHAST

Title: Gormenghast
Production Type: TV Mini-Series
Year of Transmission: 2000
Director: Andy Wilson
Screenwriter: Malcolm McKay
Country of Production: Britain
Genre: Gothic, Fantasy
Length: 4 hour-long episodes
Language: English
Availability: Released on blu-ray
Principal boy actors: Several boys feature as extras in episode 1 as kitchen boys under the chef Swelter. In episode 3, Cameron Powrie (below, left) plays the 12 year old Titus Groan. He is one of numerous schoolboys, of whom the only other who has a speaking role (and is given a credit) is the perpetually ink-besmudged Doggit ('Dogseye' in the original novel), played by Lewis Rose (below, right, the actor was 11 years old at time of shoot).

It is, perhaps, of some interest that in episode 4 the 17 year old Titus is played by Andrew Robertson (left and right, below), who played Jack in Andrew Birkin's 1993 film The Cement Garden (though the actor was in his mid-20s by the time he played Titus).

Synopsis
The Earldom of Gormenghast is ruled from the sprawling and decaying Gormenghast Castle, a labyrinth of rooms and corridors whose inhabitants rarely have anything to do with the peasants outside. The life of the castle is governed by vast, complex rituals whose original significance (if they ever had any) has long been forgotten, but which are rigidly followed, if not always very competently.

Within this unchanging society, Titus Groan is born as the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast; but as he grows up as an unhappy child he longs to escape his enclosed world. Meanwhile, the hierarchy of the society is challenged by the ambition of Steerpike, an upstart kitchen boy who cleverly inveigles himself into the upper echelons of the social pyramid, but seethes with resentment because of his low birth and the inequalities of society.

It is episode 3 of this four-part miniseries that is on-topic for this Archive, with its depiction of 12 year old Titus Groan and his schoolmates.

The miniseries was based on the first two books of the Gormenghast trilogy (Titus Groan, 1946, Gormenghast, 1950, Titus Alone, 1959) by British writer and illustrator Mervyn Peake (1911-1968). The series is true to its source material, but sometimes alters details in individual scenes in ways that make a satisfying visual representation of the characteristics of Gormenghast. For example, the still at the top of this page depicts a scene in Chapter 24 of Gormenghast (the second volume of the Gormenghast trilogy); but in the book, it is Steerpike who chooses the boy to substitute for the absent Titus, not Bellgrove, and there is no cute ceremonial blue ribbon, as there is in the TV series.

Overall, the TV series is a gorgeous realisation of the novels, with a cast list that reads as a roster of some of the finest British acting talent of its time.

Screenshots

Episode 1

Episode 3

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