Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (review)

This version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, first broadcast on 20 November 1980, has all the hallmarks of a BBC production, with period costumes, sombre interiors, attention to detail and an acute awareness of class distinctions. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has always been an ambiguous text in terms of genre: it is definitely in the horror category but has just enough detective work by the lawyer, Mr Utterson, to make him almost a sleuth and just enough references to science to enable visual effects created for Dr Jekyll's experiments to tip it toward sf. The transformation scene has provided a vehicle for the latest in special effects, from stop-camera trick photography in the earliest silent version to the latest in digital morphing.

The BBC version of the story goes more for social commentary than science or detective work. Like Rouben Mamoulian's classic 1931 adaptation, it opens with a first-person narration, although Mamoulian's version famously commences with the camera showing Jekyll's perspective. In this adaptation, the actor David Hemmings addresses the camera directly, giving us the back story as he speaks into a phonographic recording device. He is surrounded by the customary apparatus of the nineteenth-century mad scientist in the tradition of Victor Frankenstein. The dark wood, gas lamps and heavy shadows let us know that we are about to be plunged into the BBC's version of the Victorian period. The BBC also seems to be heavily influenced by the 1960s because Jekyll's compound includes opiates and mescal, which helps explain the psychedelic feel of his transformation scene.

Like every dramatic retelling of the story, from the Richard Mansfield's 1887 stage version onwards, this dramatisation shows Mr Hyde engaged in illicit sexual activities. Stevenson himself maintained that his story had nothing to do with sex and was an analysis of hypocrisy, but every version since the publication of the story in 1886 has some sexual element in it. The BBC – in an effort to show that it is not prudish – portrays Hyde as a paedophile, taking a working-class girl selling flowers into a darkened building. In the original, Hyde simply tramples over a young girl, so this certainly adds shock value. Hyde also drugs one of Jekyll's servants and has his wicked way with her, mercifully off camera. Luckily the BBC did not decide it needed to add nudity to give its retelling more impact and overall, despite the child-molesting scene, it is quite decorous, except in a rather odd twist in which Jekyll's love interest, Ann (Lisa Harrow), finds Hyde to be a more exciting lover. Apparently Hyde, while unacceptable in the drawing room, is an animal in the bedroom.

Also in keeping with previous film versions, Jekyll is turned into a more appealing character, heavily involved in various philanthropic activities. There are hints, however, that he has a taste for sadomasochism, which presumably explains in part why he splits off into the sexually adventurous Hyde. Actually David Hemmings' Jekyll is so mournful that one can see why he would need some excitement in his life. The BBC does a very good job of showing the Victorian period as dark, rainy and depressing and, although I would not go as far as one commentator on imdb.com who declared it 'the most boring Jekyll and Hyde ever', the words 'ponderous' and 'slow' do come to mind frequently as it plods along. This is partially due to the BBC's relentless effort to 'periodise' the piece, which means lovingly detailed sets and lingering camera shots on props that scream 'authentic Victorian material culture!' The BBC props department were presumably paid by the piece, since the sets are chockfull of furniture and objects all shot in funereal tones.

It is unfortunately in the transformation scenes that this version most shows its age. Such scenes are conveyed via a psychedelic rush of images, a holdover from the 1960s. In the first, Jekyll sees a skull, a...