---
title: "Middlemarch"
year: 1994
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/middlemarch"
fi1m_id: "middlemarch"
imdb_id: "tt0108858"
tmdb_id: 14771
wikidata_id: "Q6841812"
fi1m_score: 78
critics_reviews: 1
published: "2026-10-07T12:07:43.460295+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-07T12:07:58.837949+00:00"
region: "TH"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Middlemarch (1994)

Created by Anthony Page · 1h 00m · Drama, Comedy

## Identity

Middlemarch

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/middlemarch
- **Type:** Series
- **Fi1m ID:** middlemarch
- **IMDb ID:** tt0108858
- **TMDB ID:** 14771
- **Wikidata ID:** Q6841812
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108858/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/14771, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6841812

**Fi1m score: 78** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* A whole town marries badly at once and the neighbours have opinions about every match

> Andrew Davies cuts George Eliot’s enormous novel down to six brisk hours and keeps most of what matters. The town looks lived in, the marriages hurt, and Juliet Aubrey and Patrick Malahide make the worst of them the best thing in it.

## Synopsis

Middlemarch, a provincial Midlands town in the years before the Reform Bill. Dorothea Brooke (Juliet Aubrey), serious and hungry for something to do with her life, lives with her uncle Arthur Brooke (Robert Hardy) and turns down the neighbouring landowner Sir James Chettam (Julian Wadham) for the Rev. Edward Casaubon (Patrick Malahide), a dry scholar many years her senior whose great unfinished book she means to help him write. Casaubon’s young cousin Will Ladislaw (Rufus Sewell) watches the engagement with open dismay. Into town comes Dr. Tertius Lydgate (Douglas Hodge), a doctor with new ideas and the banker Bulstrode’s (Peter Jeffrey) money behind him, who catches the eye of the mayor’s daughter Rosamond Vincy (Trevyn McDowell). Her brother Fred (Jonathan Firth) idles, waiting for old Peter Featherstone (Michael Hordern) to die and leave him the farm.

## Review

George Eliot’s *Middlemarch* is a novel about a whole town, and nobody who has carried the thing on a train would call it brisk. Andrew Davies has made it brisk. His adaptation, directed by Anthony Page and produced by Louis Marks, runs six episodes of an hour, and it moves through courtships, deathbeds, elections and bankruptcies at a steady trot without ever looking hurried. It is a good, intelligent, well-cast piece of television drama, and what it loses in the cutting it mostly makes up in the playing.

The heart of it is Dorothea Brooke and the man she chooses. Juliet Aubrey plays Dorothea as a young woman who wants to be useful and has been given nothing to be useful at, and she lets us see the error coming long before Dorothea does. Patrick Malahide’s Casaubon is the surprise. The clergyman is written as a dry stick, and Malahide plays him as a dry stick who knows it, a man who has spent his life on a book he will never finish and has begun to suspect as much. We expected to dislike him and found instead that we pitied him, badly, from the first scene of their honeymoon in Rome, where Dorothea wants to talk and he wants to be left alone with his notes. It is the kind of marriage that has no villain in it, and both actors understand that.

The second marriage is the one Davies writes with the most relish. Douglas Hodge gives Dr. Tertius Lydgate a proper doctor’s arrogance, the conviction that he is cleverer than the town and will therefore be forgiven by it, and Trevyn McDowell’s Rosamond Vincy is pretty, pleasant and quite immovable. Their scenes together are small and awful: a conversation about money in which neither person hears the other, and both leave believing they have won. Peter Jeffrey’s Bulstrode, the pious banker who holds the purse strings, is played with a stillness that makes everyone else in the frame fidget.

Brian Tufano shoots the town as a working place rather than a view. The streets are muddy, the interiors are lit from windows and candles, and the rich houses are no brighter than the poor ones, only larger. Page directs without fuss, keeping the camera at eye level and letting scenes run long enough for the actors to change their minds mid-sentence, which in this material is where the drama is. The editing keeps the four or five plots turning over so that no strand is away for long, though Fred Vincy’s troubles with his uncle’s will suffer most from the rota, and Jonathan Firth has to sketch in a whole reformation of character in about four scenes.

What the series cannot do is reproduce Eliot’s narrator, the voice that forgives everybody and lets nobody off, and that is the real cost of the cutting. Without it, the generosity has to come from the actors, and most of them supply it. Michael Hordern’s Featherstone, dying slowly and enjoying the audience, and Robert Hardy’s Arthur Brooke, standing for Parliament on principles he cannot quite remember, carry the comedy, and both are funnier than the lines alone would be. Simon Chandler’s Rev. Farebrother is the decent man of the piece and the one the camera could have stayed with longer.

Rufus Sewell is top of the billing, and Will Ladislaw is the role that gives him least to do. Sewell has the hair, the scowl and the look of a man who has been wronged by somebody, and Davies gives him speeches about art and reform that sound like position papers. The attraction between Will and Dorothea has to be mostly in the eyes, and it is, but we never quite believed he was her equal, which the story needs us to believe.

Set against the run of long costume serials, this is a cleaner, drier, less upholstered example than most, and the better for it. It does not swoon over the furniture and it does not stop to explain itself. Give it six evenings rather than one; the town is built to be visited a street at a time, and the marriages are easier to bear with a night’s sleep between them.

*Fi1m score 78, published 7 October 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Middlemarch worth watching?**

*Middlemarch* is worth watching for anyone with six evenings to give to a well-cast, unhurried costume serial, and we scored it 78. Juliet Aubrey and Patrick Malahide make Dorothea's bad marriage the best thing in it, and the town looks lived in rather than photographed. Rufus Sewell's Will Ladislaw is the weak link, and the cutting loses George Eliot's narrator.

**How long is Middlemarch, and what is it rated?**

*Middlemarch* has episodes of about 1h 00m. It is a drama and comedy series.

**Where can I watch Middlemarch in Thailand?**

*Middlemarch* is not on any streaming or rental service in Thailand at the moment. It is available in 4 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How does Middlemarch compare to Bleak House?**

*Middlemarch* is the cleaner and drier of the two Andrew Davies serials, and we think the better one. [*Bleak House*](https://film.one/tv/bleak-house) is Dickens in half-hour bursts, with a gothic treatment that supplies comedy but makes the serious drama harder to believe. *Middlemarch* keeps its marriages small and painful and never swoons over the furniture; viewers who want brisker, broader entertainment may prefer *Bleak House*.

**Is Middlemarch based on a true story or a book?**

*Middlemarch* is based on George Eliot's novel of the same name, not on a true story. Andrew Davies cuts the enormous book down to six hours and keeps most of what matters, though the narrator's forgiving voice cannot survive the move to television. You do not need to have read the novel; the actors supply most of the generosity the page would have.

**What should I watch after Middlemarch?**

After *Middlemarch*, try [*Bleak House*](https://film.one/tv/bleak-house) (2005, Fi1m 65): Dickens done in half-hour bursts, with a whole city’s worth of marriages going wrong. Then [*The Age of Innocence*](https://film.one/film/the-age-of-innocence) (1993, Fi1m 86): Another provincial society policing its own, this time in New York drawing rooms; and [*The Leopard*](https://film.one/film/the-leopard) (1963, Fi1m 88): Visconti’s Sicilian landowners face reform with more ballrooms and less hope.

### Reviews we read (1)

- **Variety**, Derek Elley (70/100, inferred): The review praises the adaptation as an elegant, well-made series that should appeal to readers of the novel. It singles out Andrew Davies’ brisk script and the performances of Juliet Aubrey and Douglas Hodge. [Read](https://variety.com/1994/film/reviews/middlemarch-1200435171/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Anthony Page
- **Director:** Anthony Page
- **Writer:** Andrew Davies
- **Novel:** George Eliot
- **Cinematography:** Brian Tufano
- **Producer:** Louis Marks
- **Cast:** Rufus Sewell as Will Ladislaw; Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea Brooke; Peter Jeffrey as Bulstrode; Trevyn McDowell as Rosamond Vincy; Douglas Hodge as Dr. Tertius Lydgate; Robert Hardy as Arthur Brooke; Patrick Malahide as Rev. Edward Casaubon; Michael Hordern as Peter Featherstone
- **Runtime:** 1h 00m
- **Release (Thailand):** 12 January 1994
- **Genres:** Drama, Comedy

## Where to watch in Thailand

Not streaming, renting or buying in Thailand at the last check.

Also available in: AT, CA, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Pride and Prejudice* (1995): Andrew Davies again, a year on, with a smaller book and a lighter touch
- *Daniel Deronda* (2002): Eliot’s last novel, cut less kindly but acted with the same seriousness
- *Bleak House* (2005), Fi1m 65: Dickens done in half-hour bursts, with a whole city’s worth of marriages going wrong — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/bleak-house.md)
- *The Age of Innocence* (1993), Fi1m 86: Another provincial society policing its own, this time in New York drawing rooms — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-age-of-innocence.md)
- *The Leopard* (1963), Fi1m 88: Visconti’s Sicilian landowners face reform with more ballrooms and less hope — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-leopard.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/middlemarch