To many, George Eliot's "Middlemarch" is the greatest novel in English - a searching, 19th-century epic of psychology and place that locates in one English village the spectrum of fear, vanity, beneficence and feeling.
Enter the BBC, whose track record in literary adaptations includes healthy doses of Dickens, Trollope, Jane Austen, and even, in 1968, a previous go at "Middlemarch."But its 1994 "Middlemarch," budgeted at $9.7 million and beginning its six-part American airing tonight at 9 p.m. on KUED-Ch. 7, is something else altogether.
A putative costume drama, it is concerned with characters, not clothes; as an homage to Eliot's abiding moralism, it rings truer than ever today.
As a banner event from a broadcaster putting its best face, and resources, forward, "Middlemarch" also is an assertive gesture from a BBC whose own future - to be or not to be more commercial - is more uncertain than ever.
The miniseries was a hit in Britain, capturing the public imagination in a way not seen since Granada TV aired "The Jewel In the Crown" a decade ago.
"I thought it was going to be a BBC cultural minority piece," said Louis Marks, its producer. Instead, he found the show "breaking out of the culture ghetto, the chattering ghetto. Bingo clubs would close down at 8:30 so everyone could see it."
More than seven million people - one-eighth of the populace - watched each of its six episodes, said Marks. More than 105,000 paperback copies of the novel have sold since the show began airing, he said.
The Lincolnshire town of Stamford, where most of the series was shot over 23 weeks last year, has become a tourist draw, with the local museum displaying "Middlemarch" props alongside real antiques.
"Middlemarch," in other words, isn't just TV. And it is not just the BBC, since it was co-produced with Boston's WGBH-TV.
"`Middlemarch' is England," said Marks, whose BBC credits include the 1985 TV version of Eliot's 1861 "Silas Marner" that starred Ben Kingsley.
"Eliot has such an accurate, authentic eye of England," he said. "It's a recognizable England - the idealism and ambition of young people and the grinding small-mindedness of provincial life, the petty-minded prejudice and narrowness."
"It's also a smashing love story, very meatily plotted. Eliot is a fantastic dramatist."
That she is, whether one is tracing the fortunes of the idealistic young doctor, Lydgate, or the cruel-hearted Rev. Casaubon; of the guileless heroine Dorothea or her artist suitor, Ladislaw, Casaubon's cousin.
Apart from veteran actors Robert Hardy and Sir Michael Hordern, the large cast includes few big names but several stars-in-the-making.
These include Douglas Hodge as Lydgate, a role pencilled in for Ralph Fiennes who instead opted for "Schindler's List" (and won an Oscar nomination in the process); brooding theater actor Rufus Sewell, from Tom Stoppard's award-winning "Arcadia," as Ladislaw; and newcomers Juliet Aubrey and Trevyn McDowell as Dorothea and her temperamental opposite, the self-absorbed Rosamond, who is Lydgate's wife and the mayor's daughter.
"Everybody was absolutely inspired by the book, because once you get to grips with it, it is the most wonderful piece of work," said Anthony Page, the series' director. "It's really an incredible treasure chest to dip into."
Abetted by scriptwriter Andrew Davies, of "Mother Love" and "House of Cards" fame, Marks and Page were careful to underplay the "literary" nature of their source. The goal, they said, was good TV, not worthy TV.
"We campaigned to have (the phrase) `BBC classic drama' dropped out of any of our publicity," Marks said.
Page, whose American film credits include "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden" in 1976 (he calls it producer Roger Corman's "one art film") insisted on a week's rehearsal for each six weeks of filming.
He said Eliot's view of an industrializing England - the book is set in 1832 - meshes with a country reeling from the social upheavals wrought by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
"We're going through a directionless, sleazy period," Page said, "and I think the subject (of `Middlemarch') does hit people. George Eliot is a very strong moralist, which is not terribly fashionable."
The book, he said, is about a rooted provincialism, about what was and what remains "a very philistine nation."
"It's all in the novel," Page said. "Things simply haven't changed."