By FRANCES GRANT
The Groans, ruling family of the kingdom of Gormenghast, are celebrating the birth of a son and heir in their own peculiar way.
The mother, Gertrude, Countess of Groan, is more than happy to be relieved of her burden and get back to her beloved white cats. "Bring him [baby Titus] back in six years," she instructs an overwhelmed Nannie Slagg.
The sight of his son does nothing to lighten the funereal countenance of Lord Sepulchrave, who comments only on the baby's ugliness.
His daughter, the volatile - nobody would dare say unstable - Fuchsia, stamps her foot in jealous rage at the birth of a rival.
On levels below, far below, the dynastic Groans, an ecosystem of grotesques filling all niches of the vast family pile, are a-twitter with the news.
After five years of toil - including constructing 120 studio sets, large-scale models and computer graphics - the BBC has produced a telly adaptation of writer Mervyn Peake's "unfilmable" fantasy, Gormenghast (tonight, TV One, 9.40) .
The four-hour production, an adaptation by Malcolm McKay of the first two books of Peake's trilogy, boasts a cast of top British actors and comedians including Ian Richardson, Warren Mitchell, Spike Milligan, Stephen Fry, Eric Sykes, Celia Imrie and Zoe Wanamaker.
But the woman who steals the show, in tonight's first episode at least, is Dot Cotton - sorry, June Brown (EastEnders) as the wizened cough-medicine addict Nannie Slagg.
Trembling with obsequiousness within the castle walls, she is all improbably perched headgear and imperiousness outside. "Lower than the low!" she addresses a crowd of slum-dwellers.
If you've read the books, you may be wondering how Peake's prose - as labyrinthine and ornate as Gormenghast castle itself - could possibly translate to the small screen.
McKay has cut a swathe through the text, paring it back with the efficiency of one of Chef Swelter's kitchen hands, and lets the visuals do the talking.
The plot itself is basic. A young servant, Steerpike (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), escapes life in the hellish castle kitchen and begins his ambitious plans to bring down the House of Groan.
In their dusty grandeur, mired in elaborate and meaningless ritual, the Groans are easy prey for the quick-witted opportunist - until Lord Titus grows up to defend his legacy.
Expect, then, a dark and twisted fairytale of an empire in decline (yes, there are rich pickings for the keen allegorist), a splendid array of freaks and monsters and extraordinary costumes and sets creating a strange, hybrid world of oriental-Gothic fantasy.
TV: Gormenghast is peake performance
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