Gustave Flaubert’s novel, acknowledged to be one of the world’s greatest, was brought to life in a four-part BBC2 series in 1975 with Francesca Annis in the title role as the convent-reared Emma Rouault – a farmer’s spirited daughter whisked off by dull country doctor Charles Bovary (Tom Conti) into marriage and then, by disillusion, into adultery.
Drowning in a sea of romanticism, she takes two lovers – handsome and passionate law student Léon Dupuis (Brian Stirner) and wealthy landowner Rodolphe Boulanger (Denis Lill) – but is deserted by them and sinks into misery, debt and despair and finally to death by arsenic.
The finely realised settings by Raymond Cusick and Joan Ellacott’s costumes were a delight to the eye and a satisfaction to one’s sense of history.
The series aired on PBS in the US in October 1976.
Emma Bovary (Rouault)
Francesca Annis Dr Charles Bovary
Tom Conti Homais
Ray Smith Léon Dupuis
Brian Stirner Father Bournisien
David Waller Félicité
Gabrielle Lloyd Rodolphe Boulanger
Denis Lill Lheureux
John Cater Madame Bovary, Charles’s Mother
Kathleen Helme Guillaumin
Ivor Roberts Dr Canivet
Michael Poole Justin
Stephen Bent Girard
Bernard Taylor Vicomte
Nicholas Hawtrey Hippolyte
John Tordoff M. Rouault
Richard Beale Nastasie
Elizabeth Proud Lieuvain
John Sterland Beadle
James Bree Madame Homais
Amanda Grinling
Drowning in a sea of romanticism, she takes two lovers – handsome and passionate law student Léon Dupuis (Brian Stirner) and wealthy landowner Rodolphe Boulanger (Denis Lill) – but is deserted by them and sinks into misery, debt and despair and finally to death by arsenic.
