The Jewel in the Crown
The Jewel in the Crown was a fourteen-part serial
produced by Granada Studios and first broadcast on British
television in January 1984. A lavish prestige production, it
received critical acclaim and won several national and
international awards.
Based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet (four novels published
between 1966 and 1975) the series focused on the final years of
the British in India.
Set against the backdrop of WWII, and using the rape of an
English woman as its dramatic centre, Jewel in the Crown
charted a moment of crisis and change in British national history.
The serial itself was produced during a moment of crisis and
change in British life: mass unemployment, the arrival of new
social and class configurations tied to emerging political and
economic trends all conspired to destabilise and recast notions of
national and cultural identity in the early 1980s.
While often critical of Britain's past, this show permitted a
nostalgic gaze back to a golden age, presenting a vision of Empire
as something great and glorious. The show seemed to offer
reassurance to the British public and proved immensely popular
with TV viewers in the UK.
Jewel managed to hold on to some of the formal
complexity of the novels by employing voice-overs, flashbacks and
newsreel inserts.
By the third episode the serial's central character Daphne
Manners was killed off and only one character spanned the whole
fourteen episodes (the evil Ronald Merrick who dies in episode
thirteen and only appears in the final part through flashback).
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