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A Suitable Boy review – a very British, Indian period drama

It is beautiful, expensive and groundbreaking in its casting, yet Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Vikram Seth’s tome still feels uncomfortably old-school

There is a lot riding on A Suitable Boy (BBC One), which is a fate that befalls pioneering and overdue series such as this. It is the BBC’s first period drama – in more than half a century of forays into the past in horse and carriage, from where you get a rather restricted view of history – with an entirely south Asian cast and no white characters. No, not even one cantankerous dame protecting her fortune from her deathbed.

So, this six-episode distillation of Vikram Seth’s 1,300-page panorama of post-partition India has to do everything, at once, in multiple territories. It is a tall order, especially when some were unhappy with aspects of the adaptation before the opening credits rolled. Does A Suitable Boy succeed? Could anything on such challenging terms?

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