Capturing Mary

Infobox Television
show_name = Capturing Mary


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genre = Television drama
creator = Stephen Poliakoff
writer = Stephen Poliakoff
director = Stephen Poliakoff
editing = Clare Douglas
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starring = David Walliams
Danny Lee Wynter
Dame Maggie Smith
Ruth Wilson
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country = UK
language = English
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network = BBC Two
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first_aired = 12 November 2007
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preceded_by = "Joe's Palace"
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website = http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/poliakoff/capturing_mary_feature.shtml
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imdb_id = 0899052
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"Capturing Mary" is a BBC television drama (co-produced by HBO), written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff. It was aired on BBC Two on 12 November 2007. It is linked, by the central character of Joe, to another Poliakoff drama, Joe's Palace, which was first aired on 4 November 2007.

Overview

The drama saw a repeat of Danny Lee Wynter's caretaker character of Joe, who encounters former socialite Mary (played by Dame Maggie Smith in the present and Ruth Wilson in her youth) when she visits the house featured in "Joe's Palace". We see flashbacks to her past links with the house. This present-day meeting between Joe and Mary overlaps with the events of "Joe's Palace".

The programme also starred David Walliams as the character Greville White and Gemma Arterton as Greville White's young date, Liza.

Plot

We first meet the character of Mary as an old woman (Dame Maggie Smith) in the present. The “old” Mary, a former journalist and socialite, arrives at the house of Elliot Graham’s late father. Joe, the caretaker of the house, takes pity on her and invites her in. She begins to recount to Joe the significance of the house to her.

Moving from room to room, she tells Joe of the 1950s high society soirees she was invited to in the house. She recalls how Mr Graham’s soirees were attended by the great and the good – the aristocracy, the noveaux riche, industrialists, newspaper barons, editors, actors, directors, and so forth. She tells Joe that she has been haunted by the memory of a sinister man named Greville White who she met one evening in the house. Greville White turns out to be a social climber whose influence reached into high society. Mary recalls that he was supremely charming, but utterly evil. We see Greville and the “young” Mary (Ruth Wilson) in Mr Graham’s cellar selecting fine wines for a salad that he has prepared. In the cellar, Greville tells Mary of dark secrets involving members of the British Establishment who are enjoying Mr Graham’s soiree in the rooms above them. The secrets involve child abuse, sexual perversion, anti-semitism, and racism amongst the great and the good.

He feigns friendship with Mary, but she rejects him because of his malevolent powers. The audience encounters “subsequent” meetings between the two in the 1950s and 1960s at Mr Graham’s soirees and other social events. We begin to see the sinister destruction of Mary’s life by Greville White and her slide into despair and alcoholism.

The end of the drama sees Greville White re-appear in Kensington Gardens in the present. Mary is now an old woman (Dame Maggie Smith) but the sinister Greville White has not aged since they first met in the 1950s. The audience is left questioning whether Greville White and Mary ever met again after his dark revelations to her in Mr Graham's wine cellar. Poliakoff leaves us wondering whether their "subsequent meetings" were a figment of Mary's imagination - regret at her wasted youth and talent, embodiment of her struggle to succeed against the back drop of the class-based British Establishment, representation of her alcoholism, or merely that Greville's sinister revelations have remained with her into old age.

External links

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/poliakoff/capturing_mary_feature.shtml "Capturing Mary"] at the BBC website.