Video: A Romance of the Raj

The Far Pavilions, HBO, April 22,23,24, 8p.m. E.S. T.

Come to exotic India! Surrender to the magic and romance of the East! See snowcapped peaks and dusty plains. Visit pastel palaces and brooding temples. Ride painted pachyderms, wander through crowded bazaars, and puff contentedly on a hookah. Meet scheming maharajahs and delicate princesses with those funny earrings in their noses. Sit back as lissome native girls in swirling saris dance for your delight. Take advantage of this once in a lifetime offer: witness the traditional Indian suttee, a barbaric ritual in which a willing Hindu widow is cremated on the funeral pyre of her husband. India. A country of contrasts. See it for yourself.

The Far Pavilions, a six-hour, three-part mini-series on HBO is a sumptuous package tour of 19th century India under the British Raj. The lush, romantic travelogue leisurely wanders the flowery landscape of Victorian fiction, where swashbuckling heroes die happily for Mother England, wasp-waisted ladies in corsets palpitate at the prospect of illicit love, fawning natives in turbans plot palace intrigue, and florid, harrumphing senior officers shoulder the white man’s burden. The production, based on M.M. Kaye’s 1978 bestseller, represents pay cable’s first real venture in “long-form” television. Filmed on location in India at a cost of more than $12 million, The Far Pavilions deserves the accolade once reserved for large-scale Hollywood epics: every dollar (and rupee) is “right up there on the screen.” Cecil B. DeMille could not have called for more elephants.

The story covers some twenty years, from the great mutiny of 1857 until the second Afghan War, as seen through the intense, close-set eyes of Ashton Pelham-Martyn (Ben Cross). Like Kipling’s hero Kim, Ashton is the orphaned child of English-speaking parents. Raised by an Indian nurse, who passes the boy off as her son Ashok, he is discovered by Britons and shipped home to England to become a proper sahib. As a young man, he returns to India, joins the crack Corps of Guides, valiantly leads expeditions into the Afghan mountains, and suffers a grievous casualty at the hands of a snippy English woman who rejects his of fer of marriage. But another pair of mascaraed eyes is just around the corner.

When Ashton is ordered to accompany an elaborate royal wedding procession across India, he falls desperately in love with Princess Anjuli (Amy Irving), a half-caste whom he first adored as a child. Before they can ride off into the crimson sunset, numerous complications arise, including a valiant defense of the British embassy in Kabul and the rescue of Anjuli from a cruel marriage and the threat of suttee. So much for narrative.

The real story is whether the proud and cheeky Englishman is Ashok or Ashton. Cross, best remembered for his athletics in Chariots of Fire, gives a strong, unfussy performance and looks equally at home in British regimental uniform and silk dhoti. The uneasy citizen of opposing worlds continually suffers from cultural schizophrenia: “I . . . shall always be two people in one skin, which is not a comfortable thing to be.” Only Anjuli can make him whole. As the Indian princess, Amy Irving is properly equipped with saris and cliches, but she looks as though she had been dipped in cocoa for the role. Still, Irving bears up well in a difficult part; it cannot have been easy to play a dignified love scene and utter lines like “. . . men are careless of their seed.”

The Far Pavilions offers an expanse of glittering surface; anyone who wants to sample the sights and sounds of 19th century India need look no further. On the details of politics and social struggles, the mini-series is mini indeed. Although Cross has bouts of sneering indignation, British imperialism comes off as vaguely benevolent paternalism imposed on unruly children. Thousands may be killed, but the real battlefield is always the heart.

Emotions eclipse treaties, and it is passion rather than espionage that constitutes what Kipling dubbed “the great game.”

— All this is in keeping with tele” vision’s now standard formula of adapting a hefty bestseller to the small screen by silhouetting a pair of lovers against a grand historical tapestry. While the costumes and scenery may change, the heavy breathing remains the same; just exchange George Washington’s tricornered hat for a turban. Unlike film, the mini-series is capable of infinite horizontal extension, and The Far Pavilions sometimes seems to be even longer and more convoluted than the elaborate wedding procession that snakes its way across the Indian countryside. Yet in the end, the journey yields a pleasant sort of weariness. After all, The Far Pavilions is not history, but romance, best symbolized by that caravan of elephants proudly carrying delicate princesses in luxuriously appointed howdahs. The viewers, like the travelers, are trundled slowly but surely along, secure in the knowledge that, however loud the shots or wails, they will arrive safely, if sleepily, at their destinations. —By Richard Stengel