Program Title
Turn of the Screw

Based On
Novel by Henry James

Adapted By
Nick Dear

Number of Episodes:
1

Description
An impressionable young woman accepts a position as governess to the niece and nephew of a handsome bachelo. His strange stipulation is that she take sole charge of the secluded estate where the children reside and never to contact him about anything whatsoever. The governess' charges are Miles and Flora, both charming and intelligent, but also independent and enigmatic--especially Miles, who is expelled from boarding school for unspecified bad behavior. What had originally been an idyllic position begins to unravel when the governess spots a strange man on the grounds. Upon hearing his description, the housekeeper Mrs. Grose reacts with horror. It can only be Peter Quint, she says--the former valet, now dead...


Original broadcast date
2000-02-27

Cast	Characters
Colin Firth	The Master
Pam Ferris	Mrs. Grose
Johdi May	Miss
Joe Sowerbutts	Miles
Grace Robinson	Flora
Jason Salkey	Peter Quint
Caroline Pegg	Miss Jessel
Jenne Howe	Cook

Credits
Executive Producer: Tim Vaughan, Michele Buck
Producer: Martin Pope
Director: Ben Bolt

Intro
THE TURN OF THE SCREW/Intro by Russell Baker

When he was fifty years old, Henry James suffered one of the worst humiliations a writer can endure. He was booed off stage on opening night of the only play he ever wrote.

He already had a well-established literary reputation, but this mid-life failure as a playwright was psychologically devastating.

His biographer, Leon Edel, believes it explains the spate of stories about children that James wrote over the next five years.

…That he was struggling to understand his own childhood. A few days after his nightmare evening in the theater, James took tea with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who told him of a ghost story he'd heard long ago.

It involved two small children who had been visited by the ghosts of two dead servants with horrible intentions.

James recorded this in his notebook. It was the tiny seed that was to grow three years later into one of his most popular tales.

"The Turn of the Screw" begins as a ghost story, but its enduring grip on the mind comes from something more substantial than ectoplasm.

Certain modern critics believe it is actually about a very real case of sexual hysteria. Perhaps -- but there are other possibilities.

Maybe it's about the corruption of innocent children. After all, James was exploring his own childhood at this stage of his life.

In any case, here he follows the novelist's classic rule: Show, don't tell. Now, we'll do the same.

The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James.





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