HBO (Sunday, April 22, 8 p.m. ET)
Well, the Indian scenery is pretty. And the elephants wear some simply gorgeous costumes. Unfortunately, the elephants are the fastest thing about HBO's $12 million, six-hour minisaga based on M.M. Kaye's novel. Ben (Chariots of Fire) Cross stars as Ashton Hillary Pelham-Martyn, "Ash" to you. When his parents die in 19th-century colonial India, young Ash is raised as a native in a Raj's palace. But then some mean bloke burns a brand on Ash's chest: It has something to do with the bloke tormenting Ash's pet mongoose (it's all quite confusing at first). Ash runs away to some soldiers who discover he's really a Briton. So he's sent off to England to lose his accent, then returns to fight Indians and Afghans; he's dumped by his fiancée and then reminisces about Princess Anjull, his childhood sweetheart in the palace. "God knows where she is now," Ash muses. Enter Amy (Yentl) Irving, immersed in Quick Tanning Lotion, an instant ethnic. Ash and Anjuli dabble in forbidden love (they consummate that passion in a disappointing, unsexy love scene), then are separated when she's forced to marry an old coot, then...well, we won't ruin the ending; there should be some reward for sitting through the entire six hours. Since this is cable, there are no commercials—but a few would be welcome to break it up. Pavilions is woefully short on suspense. Too little of the plot is dramatized; instead, it is talked about in stiff dialogue delivered in caricatures of British accents. When bleeding-heart Ash complains, unrealistically, about colonialism ("It's their country! We stole it from them!"), his colleagues huff: "Bloody cheek and damned bad manners!" When Ash is sent on assignment, he moans, "In polo season!" And when John Gielgud, the leader of an invasion of Afghanistan, dies in battle, his last words are just too terribly British: "You will let my wife know, won't you?" Cross, Irving and Gielgud, together with co-stars Omar Sharif, Rossano Brazzi and Christopher Lee, are all fine actors, but their talents are held prisoner by leaden directing and the silly, slow-moving script. What could have been an extravaganza ends up only extra-long. (Part Two airs Monday, Part Three Tuesday.)
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