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The lowdown: 'Cousin Bette' is a five-part mini-series that was first broadcast on BBC2 from 7 August to 4 September 1971. Based on the 1846 novel by Honoré de Balzac, it stars Margaret Tyzack in the title role of Bette, Colin Baker as a young Polish sculptor named Count Wenceslas Steinbock and Helen Mirren (in one of her earliest acting roles) as a prostitute named Valérie Marneffe. 'Cousin Bette' is a compelling story of love and revenge set in 19th-century France. Elisabeth 'Bette' Fischer is a poor, middle-aged spinster who earns a modest living as an embroiderer. The series begins with Bette saving the lift of a neighbour who had tried to gas himself to death in his flat. She nurses him back to health and discovers that he is a struggling artist from Poland who is finding it hard to make a living in Paris, and had decided to do himself in. However, Bette believes that he an honest man (he had set aside the weekly rent before turning on the gas) and thinks he has potential as an artist, and agrees to provide him with material asistance from her modest means until he can establish himself as an artist. She also quite fancies him, despite the fact that she is old enough to be his mother. Bette introduces Steinbock
to her young cousin Hortense, who buys one of his sculptures, while her
father commissions
The
verdict: 'Cousin Bette' (or La Cousine Bette) in the original
French) is an entertaining story in its own right, but the
Quote:
(Bette) We are comrades
in adversity. Brother, sister, mother, son. Everything!
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