On the surface, the story of Madame Bovary seems ripe for a miniseries treatment. It's the tragic story of a woman, Emma (Francesca Annis), who longs for excitement and love, the opposite of her current life in the country. Marriage to a doctor from the town (Tom Conti) seems to promise a change for the better, but Emma is soon bored, and feels trapped by her role in French society. So she begins to seek out passion in a series of affairs, leading inevitably to disaster.

Sadly, the 1975 BBC production of Madame Bovary doesn't live up to its material. More to the point, it doesn't live up to the BBC's reputation for producing excellent miniseries adaptations of classic novels. I suppose we'll have to chalk Madame Bovary up to "nobody's perfect," showing that even the best studios can produce truly dreadful stuff every once in a while.

And yes, Madame Bovary is dreadful. The four-hour series feels like nothing so much as an extended improvisation by amateur actors trying to maximize their use of a few sets. The opening episode, "Marriage," is a case in point. As the story opens, we are thrown into a scene with Emma meeting Dr. Bovary, who has come to treat her father's broken leg. We are thrown right into the scene, with no context and no sense of who the characters are; in fact, it feels like there's a missing episode right before it.

The abrupt opening might be workable if the narrative moved smoothly on from there, but it doesn't. The entire series is a peculiar mix of "too much" and "not enough" exposition. Many, even most, of the scenes are bloated, lingering agonizingly over the material, with an interminable amount of small-talk among the characters and very little of actual interest in the story. Each scene feels very much like the actors were put together in the room, told the general gist of the material, and left to improvise. When we get to events that actually matter to the story, the series handles the material just as clumsily, but in the opposite way. The story cuts far too abruptly from one moment to the next, giving no indication of how much time has passed; events like Dr. Bovary's proposal to Emma, or Emma's later difficulties, seem to come out of nowhere, making the characters appear unmotivated puppets of the plot.

We could probably forgive the awkwardness of the plot if the characters were interesting, but here, again, Madame Bovary falls short. Everything is overdone or underdone: Emma herself is bland, but her husband Dr. Bovary is a caricature of an idiotic, weak man. We're not interested in Emma, who seems devoid of passion, but likewise we can't pity Bovary, because he's been rendered too pathetic.

In the end, after trudging through "Marriage," "First Love," "Lost Love," and "Judgment," most viewers will find themselves shedding a sigh of relief, rather than a tear of sadness, when Emma Bovary finally comes to a bad end.

The DVD

Madame Bovary is a two-disc set, with two 50-minute episodes on each DVD. The discs are held in a cardboard fold-out case that fits into a glossy cardboard slipcase.

Video

The image quality for Madame Bovary is, though watchable, unsatisfactory. The series takes place mainly indoors, but any outdoor shots are very grainy and soft, with many print flaws; the indoor shots are generally free of the grain and scratches, but the image here is subject to occasional horizontal distortions in the transfer. Contrast is very poor, with dark areas becoming completely black and lacking detail. Colors are also rather lackluster, lacking vibrancy.

Madame Bovary is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack is adequate for this dialogue-focused miniseries. Dialogue is generally clear, though it does tend to sound a bit flat. There's a slight amount of background hissing in quiet scenes, but it's not obtrusive, and in general the sound is reasonably natural.

Extras

There are no special features for this set.

Final thoughts

Madame Bovary is one of the few instances of a failed BBC production. Poorly acted, badly paced, and clumsily written, this four-hour miniseries is an exercise in frustration. Nor does it look particularly good, as the transfer is barely passable. Better to pass on this series and spend this time watching something more entertaining. Skip it.