The Pursuit of Love
BBC1

Another Nancy Mitford adaptation for Sunday nights. It seems like only yesterday that the BBC delivered us the excellent Love in a Cold Climate which rolled that novel and The Pursuit of Love into a two-parter starring Rosamund Pike as narrator Fanny and Alan Bates as Uncle Matthew. In fact, it was 20 years ago and so many new orthodoxies have flowed under the bridge since then that it is difficult to imagine how this new treatment (by actor turned writer and director Emily Mortimer) would deal with Uncle Matthew the fox-hunting racist, Linda the love addict, sensible wife Fanny and lounging aesthete Lord Merlin. Mitford’s upper-class world offends all the current pieties with abandon.