Black Narcissus Review: 3 Ups And 5 Downs Review

Unfortunately, this is where the positives run out and Black Narcissus 2020 begins to fall apart. Let's talk about the script itself and break it down into two distinct areas; storytelling and dialogue.

Within the opening ten minutes of the original, the scene is set, the characters are established with clear goals and motivations. That is regrettably not the case here. The three leads, Sisters Clodagh and Ruth, and Mr. Dean are given motivations that are not properly explained or illustrated; Clodagh struggles with both her lack of leadership skills and a murky, tragic past, the former being nothing but her desire to succeed and the latter coming off in flashback scenes resembling a nineties Levi's advert.

Unfortunately, both suffer from a lack of detail. It's explained that Ruth is ambitious yet we never see this, we are merely told it. Perhaps Ruth's struggles with isolation and sexuality would have been better served if she had been given Clodagh's backstory instead.

As for the dialogue, the Beeb still struggle to commit to the period - audiences are capable of handling old fashioned speak in the right hands, here much of the lines feel out of place in the deeply hierarchical situation. There are some attempts at profound witticisms but they fail to hit their marks, particularly when Mr. Dean strangely observes "Jesus didn't grow up in Surrey" or when the wise housekeeper, Angu Ayah, remarks that "the world is just a bubble of froth."

With such clearly defined characters in the original, unfavourable comparisons between the two are inevitable - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.