![]() ![]() He’s played by Tom Bennett in a performance that provokes some chuckles (especially when Sir James discusses “the Twelve Commandments”) but that I wish gave the character another layer or two. When her daughter, the radiant Frederica (Morfydd Clark) shows up from school, Lady Susan has a ghastly match in store for her: Sir James, who is wealthy, kind, and the sort of jaw-dropping buffoon who could only be produced by generations of moneyed indolence. ![]() To put it in vulgar movie terms: he’s the closest thing here to a ‘Hugh Grant character’, and Xavier Samuel plays him as softly cutting in a debonair way.īut Lady Susan, while she declares affection for Reginald, is really just using him, the same way she uses everyone. She cultivates an alliance with Reginald DeCourcy, who at first seems a natural match for her. Lady Susan arrives at Churchill, the country mansion of her in-laws, where her first task is to deceptively, flirtatiously dispel any notion that she is a deceptive flirt. Lady Susan is a manipulator of such tart-tongued intricacy that when she’s on screen, you spend half the time enjoying her amoral flippancy and the other half trying to figure out what exactly it is she’s after. The central character is Lady Susan Vernon Martin, a widow of diminishing means played with high duplicitous verve by Kate Beckinsale. ![]()
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