The 1992 film adaptation of EM Forster’s 1910 novel began with a back view. Vanessa Redgrave, playing the mystical Ruth Wilcox, walks in a twilit meadow in the grounds of her house, Howards End. This opening shot was an accident. Director James Ivory and a member of his crew noticed how beautifully the train of Redgrave’s dress moved along the grass, and spontaneously turned the camera on it. Now, BBC One’s rich and absorbing new television adaptation starts with a different (and presumably planned) back view, this time following the brisk step of a postman on his route through the London streets.
Director Hettie Macdonald and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan’s decision to begin the story with the postman is astute, for although Ruth and her Hertfordshire home are at the core of Forster’s novel, the question of how we communicate with one another is the story’s most urgent concern.
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