Life in Squares

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Life in Squares
GenreDrama
Written by Amanda Coe
Directed by Simon Kaijser
ComposerEdmund Butt
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series1
No. of episodes3
Production
Executive producers
ProducerRhonda Smith
Production locations London
Charleston Farmhouse
Running time60 minutes
Production companies Ecosse Films
Tiger Aspect Productions
Original release
Network
Release27 July (2015-07-27) –
10 August 2015 (2015-08-10)

Life in Squares is a British television mini-series that was broadcast on BBC Two from 27 July to 10 August 2015. [1] [2] [3] The title comes from Dorothy Parker's witticism that the Bloomsbury Group, whose lives it portrays, had "lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles". [4]

Contents

Plot

The three-part serial centres on the close and often fraught relationship between sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, and Vanessa’s sexually complicated alliance with gay artist Duncan Grant as they, and their group of like-minded friends, navigate their way through love, sex and artistic life through the first half of the 20th century.

Production

The series was commissioned by Ben Stephenson and Lucy Richer, and produced by Ecosse Films in association with Tiger Aspect Productions. The executive producers are Lucy Bedford, Amanda Coe, Douglas Rae and Lucy Richer. [5] [6] Filming began in August 2014 in London and Charleston Farmhouse. [7] [8]

Cast

The main roles were played by: [9]

Critical reception

Writing in UK newspaper The Guardian , Lucy Mangan found that, "The drama took a certain effort of will to get into. You just have to accept that you are in a world where people convened salons, and probably did say things like 'Childe Harold is a load of posturing nonsense! It can’t hold a candle to Don Juan, even if the alexandrines are forced to breaking point!'" However, having made this effort Mangan, added: "[…] it’s very, very good. From Phoebe Fox and Lydia Leonard as the loving/warring sisters Vanessa, soon-to-be-Bell, and Virginia, slightly-later-to-be-Woolf, around whose increasingly strained relationship the story essentially revolves, to the doctor in a single scene realising his patient (the painter Duncan Grant) is 'an invert', the performances are uniformly wonderful (though Ed Birch as Lytton Strachey has so far the best part and the best time). And the script – once you take that linguistic leap of faith – is glorious. 'That’s what they do,' muses Virginia as she and Vanessa ponder the proclivities of the men in their house and lives. 'Exclude us. From clubs. Schools. Orifices.' Though on the last, Vanessa comes to disagree. She marries the uninverted Clive Bell and sends her sister a letter. 'Copulation a tremendous success!' Attagirl". [10]

In The Independent , Ellen E Jones was less impressed, writing: "The romantic entanglements of this set are so complicated that there is an undeniable achievement in laying them out clearly, as writer Amanda Coe has done here. Alas, the work's the thing and while this opening episode contained all the gossip, it conveyed none of the depth of thought or artistic feeling that must ultimately justify our interest (if any) in these people". She concluded by citing both BBC Radio 4’s parody of the Bloomsbury Group, Gloomsbury , and the "excellent" BBC Four documentary How to Be Bohemian, as having "advanced an alternative view of the set as, essentially, self-indulgent ninnies, cosseted by their wealth. If you've had the pleasure of either programme it would have been especially difficult to take this new drama seriously". [4]

Broadcast

Internationally, the series premiered in Australia on 27 October 2015 on BBC First. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Woolf</span> English modernist writer (1882–1941)

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bloomsbury Group</span> Influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, and Lytton Strachey. Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics, as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lady Ottoline Morrell</span> English aristocrat (1873–1938)

Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, and artists including Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and Gilbert Spencer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lytton Strachey</span> English writer and critic (1880–1932)

Giles Lytton Strachey was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria (1921) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duncan Grant</span> Scottish painter and designer

Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a Scottish painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets, and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vanessa Bell</span> British painter, designer and member of the Bloomsbury Group

Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clive Bell</span> English art critic, 1881–1964

Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. He developed the art theory known as significant form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon Square</span> Public park in Bloomsbury, London, England

Gordon Square is a public park square in Bloomsbury, London, England. It is part of the Bedford Estate and was designed as one of a pair with the nearby Tavistock Square. It is owned by the University of London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dora Carrington</span> British painter and decorative artist (1893–1932)

Dora de Houghton Carrington, known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey. From her time as an art student, she was known simply by her surname as she considered Dora to be "vulgar and sentimental". She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and did not sign her work. She worked for a while at the Omega Workshops, and for the Hogarth Press, designing woodcuts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Bell</span> British poet

Julian Heward Bell was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell. The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother and the writer and painter Angelica Garnett was his half-sister. His relationship with his mother is explored in Susan Sellers' novel Vanessa and Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charleston Farmhouse</span> Historic house museum

Charleston, in East Sussex, is a property associated with the Bloomsbury group, that is open to the public. It was the country home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and is an example of their decorative style within a domestic context, representing the fruition of more than sixty years of artistic creativity. In addition to the house and artists' garden, Charleston hosts a year-round programme of Bloomsbury and contemporary exhibitions in a suite of galleries designed by Jamie Fobert Architects which opened in September 2018. Two restored barns are home to The Threshing Barn café and The Hay Barn where events and workshops are held throughout the year. The Outer Studio at Charleston hosts a permanent display of Bell and Grant's Famous Women Dinner Service, and there is also a shop selling Bloomsbury-inspired art, homeware fabrics, fashion, books and stationery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelica Garnett</span> British writer and artist (1918–2012)

Angelica Vanessa Garnett, was a British writer, painter and artist. She was the author of the memoir Deceived with Kindness (1984), an account of her experience growing up at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monk's House</span> Writers house museum near Lewes, East Sussex, England

Monk's House is a 16th-century weatherboarded cottage in the village of Rodmell, three miles (4.8 km) south of Lewes, East Sussex, England. The writer Virginia Woolf and her husband, the political activist, journalist and editor Leonard Woolf, bought the house by auction at the White Hart Hotel, Lewes, on 1 July 1919 for 700 pounds, and received there many visitors connected to the Bloomsbury Group, including T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. The purchase is described in detail in her Diary, vol. 1, pp. 286–8.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thoby Stephen</span> Founding member of the Bloomsbury Group (1880-1906)

Julian Thoby Stephen, known as the Goth, was the brother of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, both prominent members of the Bloomsbury Group, and of Adrian Stephen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saxon Sydney-Turner</span> British civil servant, member of Bloomsbury Group

Saxon Arnoll Sydney-Turner was a member of the Bloomsbury Group who worked as a British civil servant throughout his life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Partridge</span> British soldier and pacifist

Reginald Sherring Partridge,, generally known as Ralph Partridge, was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. He worked for Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, married Dora Carrington and then Frances Marshall, and was the unrequited love of Lytton Strachey.

The Bloomsbury Group plays a prominent role in the LGBT history of its day.

Amanda Coe is an English screenwriter and novelist.

Mary Barnes Hutchinson was a British short-story writer, socialite, model and a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

References

  1. ↑ "BBC - BBC announces 3x60 films by Amanda Coe, Life In Squares - Media Centre". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  2. ↑ Singh, Anita (28 February 2015). "Bloomsbury set laid bare in 'intimate' new BBC drama". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  3. ↑ "Life in Squares and Vita & Virginia are bringing the Bloomsbury group to a new generation" . Independent.co.uk. 6 March 2015. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  4. 1 2 Jones, Ellen E (27 July 2015). "Life in Squares, BBC2 - TV review: Self-indulgent and over-sexed, the Bloomsbury set were hard to take seriously" . The Independent . London. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  5. ↑ "BBC - Phoebe Fox, Lydia Leonard, Sam Hoare and James Norton to star in Life In Squares for BBC Two - Media Centre". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  6. ↑ Designers, PFD - Website and Graphic. "Life in Squares - Ecosse Films". Ecossefilms.com. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  7. ↑ "BBC Two's Life In Squares confirms cast". Digitalspy.co.uk. 18 August 2014. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  8. ↑ "Visit BBC drama Life in Squares' main location in Charleston". The Argus. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  9. ↑ "BBC2: Life in Squares: Credits – Episode 1". BBC Online . Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  10. ↑ Mangan, Lucy (28 July 2015). "Life in Squares review: 'absurd, beautiful characters in a ridiculously golden world'". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  11. ↑ Purcell, Charles (23 October 2015). "New This Week (Oct 26): Chicago Fire, Bear Grylls, Halloween, RWC finals and live sport". The Green Room. Archived from the original on 23 October 2015. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
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