Howards End: a calm, cosy British drama built for binge-watching

There’s a certain sense of predictable comfort in British period dramas. The costumes, the dialogue, even the musical score wrap the viewer in an agreeable cocoon of familiarity. The four-part series Howards End (which is the name of the grand English country house that plays a significant yet disproportionately small part of the tale) does exactly this.

A co-production between British network BBC One and American network Starz, the miniseries is based on EM Forster’s novel of the same name, considered by many to be his masterpiece. Set in the early 20th Century, it examines social and class divisions in Edwardian England through three families: the intellectual and idealistic Schlegels, the wealthy Wilcoxes from the world of business, and the working-class Basts.

As an adaptation, readers of the book will no doubt have an advantage. As Variety’s Sonia Saraiya wrote, it is “impeccably cast and studiously performed” but continues to say of playwright Kenneth Lonergan – who did the screenplay – and director Hettie Macdonald that it is “so disinterested in logistics that it just skips them; especially towards the end of the four-parter, Howards End lets weeks, months, or years drop between scenes without even nodding to the audience.”

She is not wrong. But the attentive viewer who is not too concerned with the details that brought about each individual plot marker will slide into the narrative, and calmly carry on.

This happens right from the very beginning, as we see Helen Schlegel (Philippa Coulthard) writing to her sister Margaret (Hayley Atwell, Marvel Agent Carter), describing Howards End, where she is staying, and its owners, the Wilcoxes. How did she get there? Why is she there? These are questions not answered in the miniseries, unless they happened in the split second I looked away to locate my wine glass. In this short time, Helen even manages to become engaged – and then unengaged – to the youngest Wilcox son.

Later, the Wilcoxes move to London, taking up residence in a flat across the road from the Schlegel sisters and their brother Tibby (Alex Lawther, whose tendency to blurt out socially unacceptable truths and his obsessive behaviour would most likely cast him on the spectrum today).

At more or less the same time, presumably, the Schlegels meet and, on Helen’s part, become obsessed with Leonard Bast (Joseph Quinn), a lowly impoverished and awkward clerk who has a mysterious relationship with an apparently older, clingy, needy woman in poor health, Jacky (Rosalind Eleazar).

Tracy Ullman as Aunt Juley, sister of the Schlegels’ apparently late mother, is there too, to infuse situations with interference, busy bodying and confusion.

There we have the players of this piece, all but Henry Wilcox (Matthew Macfadyen, who plays Tom in HBO’s Succession). Somewhere between the end of episode 1 and the beginning of episode 2, Henry’s wife Ruth Wilcox (Julia Ormond) passes away. Having formed a friendship with Margaret, she leaves Howards End to her via a penciled note. Outraged, the Wilcoxes destroy the evidence.

There is a great deal of back and forth letter-writing, plenty of misunderstandings, and a whole lot of pompous finger-pointing on the part of insufferable widower Henry (lawdy, how he annoyed me), mainly at Margaret, whose opinions are so often at odds with his own, although he claims to love her.

“If people disagree on such fundamental levels, it asks, can they still love each other? Should they?” asks Sophie Gilbert in her review in The Atlantic.

Howards End will satisfy any lover of this genre, and the characters will evoke support or opposition as their strong performances more than make up for any gaps in the timeline.

“Hayley Atwell and Philippa Coulthard as Margaret and Helen Schlegel are a winning duo who shine from start to finish,” wrote Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Goodman.

There were definitely no regrets at the end of these four hours of bingeing.

All four episodes are on Showmax, and episode 1 arrives on DStv Now on Monday, 13 January, with subsequent episodes following every Monday.