Black Narcissus Review: 3 Ups And 5 Downs Review
Does the BBC s big budget Christmas drama Black Narcissus live up to expectations?
BBC
Based on the 1947 film of the same title, Black Narcissus is the latest offering of big budget Christmas drama from the BBC. Sister Clodagh (Gemma Arterton) is to establish a new convent at the site of the Palace of Mopu, located high in the Himalayas, accessible only from a treacherous mountain pass. With four other nuns in tow, including the wilful Sister Ruth, can Clodagh succeed in bringing the will of God to the rural population?
With impressive support from Diana Rigg (her final performance), Jim Broadbent and Alessandro Nivola as the swarthy Mr. Dean, Arteton delivers a strong performance as the Sister Superior who has the sinister reputation of Mopu to contend with. The palace was once witness to the shocking suicide of the Princess Srimati and the previous tenants, a group of monks, lasted a mere five months before abandoning the place
Kathleen Byron in Black Narcissus
Credit: Alamy
In a monastery halfway up the Himalayas, in the summer of 1946, a young Englishwoman pulled a gun on her married lover.
“It was a revolver, a big one, US army issue, and it was loaded,” Black Narcissus director Michael Powell would later write of his snow-capped showdown with paramour Kathleen Byron. “A naked woman and a loaded gun are persuasive objects, and I have always thought that I deserved congratulations for talking myself out of that one.”
The story may not be quite as scandalous as it initially sounds. Firstly, while Black Narcissus was set in craggier reaches of British India, it was actually filmed at Pinewood Studios, and at the West Sussex address of an Indian army retiree (whose garden contained geographically appropriate flora). And it is unclear whether the firearm was aimed at Powell during the shoot or afterwards.
A romcom with very little com: BBC1 s Black Narcissus reviewed spectator.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from spectator.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Bond girl Gemma Arterton wows BBC viewers with racy romps as nun in Black Narcissus
Bond Girl Gemma Arteton has left BBC viewers gobsmacked after romping dressed as a nun in new BBC drama Black Narcissus
13:02, 29 DEC 2020
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The actress, 34, gave into temptation on Sunday night s episode as viewers saw her character Sister Clodagh having steamy flashbacks to her life before she was a nun.