Little Women, episode two review: a quietly addictive post-Christmas treat that keeps giving
A gossamer glow hangs about BBC One's new adaptation of Little Woman, as though the entire affair were shot in the syrupy light of dawn, through cameras smeared with rose petals. The radiance, if anything, intensified in the second of three episodes – even as the script, by Call the Midwife screenwriter Heidi Thomas, theoretically took a swerve for the darker with the conjuring of the twin spectres of war and disease.
In Civil War-era New England, the heroines of Louisa May Alcott's enduringly beloved tale of four sisters coming of age in a cruel (albeit very pretty) world pirouetted from melodrama to melodrama. Spirited Amy (Kathryn Newton) was in trouble for smuggling sweet treats into school – the 19th-century equivalent of Snapchatting in class, one gathers – while glamorous Meg (Willa Fitzgerald) rubbed curious shoulders with the local mean girls through an invitation to the Moffats's ball.
Such frivolity was of little interest to Jo (Maya Hawke, daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman). She was soon to be a published author whose magazine income would pay for father's swanky new galoshes. Equally indifferent towards party season was big-hearted Beth (Annes Elwy), who was busy fighting the scarlet fever she contracted tending to slum-dwellers in town.
All four actresses perfectly grasped what was required – to project independent mindedness and a vague dissatisfaction with their station in life while working their way through a stunning succession of bonnets. Here stood a costume drama where the costumes were plainly as important as the drama.
Jogging along in the background – along with an under-utilised Michael Gambon as kindly Mr Laurence – the storyline rarely threatened to do more than politely intrude. Father (Dylan Baker) was ill in Washington – at least until he miraculous recovered. Beth fell deeper and deeper into fever – which abated just in time for mother Marmee (Emily Watson) to manifest at her bedside.
None of these events were unpacked with any great urgency – and nor would we have wanted them to. This was comfort-food television – as much about the gorgeous minutiae (the wavy hair and fantastic moustaches) as the narrative thrust.
Still, there were intimations of bleaker times to come. Beth was mortally weakened by the fever and clearly not long for this bucolic world. And though Meg's marriage to Civil War veteran John Brooke (Julian Morris) was off to a spiffing start – eccentric Aunt March (Angela Lansbury) turned up to offer her surprise blessing – Jo's continued rejection of ye old friend-zone occupant Laurie Laurence (Jonah Hauer-King) looked set to break at least one heart.
Yet the shadows rarely lingered and it was obvious that Thomas had scant interest in interrupting anyone's seasonal stupor with a lurch into historical grit. Little Women is quietly ravishing and addictively earnest – a crumbly, not-quite-saccharine post-Christmas treat that keeps on giving.