| Genre: | Drama |
| Screenplay: | Hugh Whitemore |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 4 |
| Producer: | Alvin Rakoff |
| Executive Producer: | Hugh Whitemore |
| Runtime: | 416 minutes |
A Dance to the Music of Time is a British four-part television drama series based on the book series of the same name by Anthony Powell. The series was also written by Anthony Powell with Hugh Whitemore as co-writer. The series was produced by Table Top Productions and directed by Christopher Morahan and Alvin Rakoff. It was first broadcast on Channel 4[1] on 9 October 1997 over four consecutive weeks.
Several young men go through public school and university together, and maintain contact as they make their way in the world through the 1920s, the upheavals of the 1930s, the Second World War and the post-war years of change in society. Many of the people they meet fall by the wayside, and their own fates are varied. The series attempts to chart change in upper-middle class society through their stories, and the realities of how the English social system worked.
The Thomas Sutcliffe of The Independent described the first episode in the series if "It's questionable whether any literary work can survive a compression as intense as that undergone by A Dance to the Music of Time" and went on to mention "For obvious reasons barely even a homeopathic trace of Powell's patrician ruminations remain - what has survived are the incidents upon which he strung his grand reflections."[3]
| Year | Award | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | British Academy Television Awards | Best Actor | Simon Russell Beale | ||
| Best Actress | |||||
| Royal Television Society Awards | Actor: Male | Simon Russell Beale | [4] | ||
| Actor: Female | Miranda Richardson | ||||