Charleston Farmhouse, 1905: sisters Phoebe Fox and Lydia Leonard swap Gordon Square gossip for colour-washed canvases and bedrooms that lock from the inside. Over forty years the drama follows Eve Best's Vanessa as she marries Clive Bell, bears Duncan Grant's child and keeps the ménage afloat while Catherine McCormack's Virginia steps from nervous breakdown to Mrs Dalloway.
Between them James Norton and Rupert Penry-Jones chart Grant's shift from timid lover to pacifist painter who will father Vanessa's daughter Angelica yet share his bed with John Maynard Keynes and, later, Jack Davenport's truculent David Garnett.
The script, stuffed with Lytton Strachey's epigrams and Woolf's razor parentheses, was written by Amanda Coe and shot by Alan Almond in the actual Sussex rooms where the tiles still carry Grant's nudes. Critics praised the performances but split over tone: The Guardian relished the high-table wit and bedroom farce, while The Independent dismissed the clan as over-privileged ninnies.
The title, borrowed from Dorothy Parker, nails the geometry: squares for housing, circles for influence, triangles for who slept where. Three hour-long episodes aired on BBC Two between 27 July and 10 August 2015; BBC First aired the drama in Australia three months later. The score is by Edmund Butt, the production by Ecosse and Tiger Aspect, and the lingering impression is of love letters inked in turpentine and treachery.
Production Details
BBC Two / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 2015
Created by: Amanda Coe
Showrunner(s): Robert Bernstein, Douglas Rae, Amanda Coe
Writer(s): Amanda Coe
Producer(s): Rhonda Smith
Cinematography: Alan Almond
Music: Edmund Butt
Main Cast
Eve Best as Older Vanessa Bell
Phoebe Fox as Young Vanessa Bell
Lydia Leonard as Young Virginia Woolf
James Norton as Young Duncan Grant
Ed Birch as Lytton Strachey
Christian Brassington as Cuthbert
Al Weaver as Leonard Woolf
Jack Davenport as David Garnett
James Northcote as Adrian Stephen
Lucy Boynton as Angelica Garnett
Jerome Finch as Saxon Sydney-Turner
Catherine McCormack as Virginia Woolf
