Pygmalion (BBC Play of the Month, 1973)

ONE OF THE FINEST TELEVISION ADAPTATIONS of George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 class satire, this 1973 British production of Pygmalion stars Lynn Redgrave as a marvelously accessible, non-cartoonish, and likable Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who becomes the subject of a socio-scientific experiment by phonetics expert Henry Higgins (James Villiers). Betting that he can turn the yowling, filthy guttersnipe Eliza into a proper lady who can pass herself off as an aristocrat, Higgins puts the poor girl through some difficult paces, then develops an affection for her that he’s ill-equipped to show. Ronald Fraser is on hand as Colonel Pickering, the warm and considerate Watson to Higgins’s imperious Holmes. (Fraser would play Pickering again in a 1981 TV version.) Emrys James is wonderful as Eliza’s father, a chimney sweep who laments the fact that Higgins’ influence has inadvertently turned him into a middle-class patriarch with unwanted responsibilities. Shaw’s piercing comedy about the