Culture fix: The Jewel in the Crown

• I fell into The Jewel in the Crown in 2008, when my then boyfriend was away for a month. Alone and with rare command of the TV remote, the 14-part series about the final years of British rule in India took hold of me in a way I have not experienced since. I say this having been so into Mad Men that I once watched 11 episodes in a day. First broadcast in 1984, Jewel is an enthralling, devastating portrait of two countries locked in a crumbling relationship. In both intensity and scope, it outstrips every other drama about the British Raj, and even though it is anything but nostalgic, veined instead with reckless malevolence, corruption and racism, there is great beauty to the story, too. Adapted from Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet novels, the series, which won a Golden Globe, an Emmy and five Baftas, begins in 1942 – the year Gandhi launched the Quit India movement in Bombay – and ends five years later with Britain’s exit. Scott’s novels move back and forward in time, to gather multiple viewpoints. The Granada TV version is mostly chronological, but both hinge on the rape of a young English woman (Susan Wooldridge) and its repercussions, not least what happens to the British-raised Indian man (Art Malik) who is falsely accused of the crime. As the story unspools, it roams the continent and gathers dozens of other characters. Even so, the slow accretion of detail is riveting. It is hard to isolate performances – all are good and many exceptional – but I fell very hard for Geraldine James, as the enlightened daughter of a British officer who, though dutiful to her cold-hearted bitch of a mother, slowly begins to find her own way. Her will-they-won’t-they love affair with a young Charles Dance (in the role that made him famous) is nearly beyond bearing.