Regarded by many as a triumph and by many more as a big-budget disaster, BBC2's adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast was never going to please everybody. Peake's trilogy has always been an acquired taste; hardly ever out of print, it has nevertheless been very much a cult. Some who love it most are hopping mad that it was televised, because now everybody will be reading it.
The TV series featured over 100 sets, using the resources of computerised illusions and exhaustive research. The biggest problem was how to portray Gormenghast itself - the rambling castle-township, dominated by inexorable rules and dead tradition, into which Titus, the 77th Earl of Groan is born and from whose depths the rebellious scullery slave Steerpike rises to threaten Gormenghast in its entirety.
Peake was born in China in 1911, later moving to London where he was an art student. The film's designer, Christopher Hobbs, believes that the rigid society portrayed in the trilogy is modelled on China's Forbidden City. His Gormenghast lies under clear skies, its towers and battlements fairy-like in the hazy mist (model exteriors were submerged in a tank of water and shot against painted backdrops). There are gardens and greenery, and a great deal of colour and pageantry.
