Elaine Cassidy plays Lucy Honeychurch and Rafe Spall is George Emerson in the "Masterpiece Classic" adaptation of  "A Room With a View."

By Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times

How you feel about the new adaptation of "A Room With a View" offered tonight on "Masterpiece Classic" is likely to hinge on two things. One is whether the 1986 film version, which made a star out of Helena Bonham Carter, has a special place in your heart. The other is whether you think 21st-century screenwriters ought to be messing around with the endings of early-20th-century novels.

The focus of the story remains what it is in E.M. Forster's 1908 work: the fairly predictable love life of young Lucy Honeychurch (Elaine Cassidy), who must choose between the cold fish to whom she is engaged and the somewhat more roguish fellow she met on a trip to Italy.

But Andrew Davies, who wrote this adaptation, and Nicholas Renton, who directed, enliven what today seems like a formulaic tale, highlighting Forster's humor and investing the proceedings with a touch of raciness. A sex scene! Assorted intimations of homosexuality! Skinny dipping! The Evening Standard of London has labeled the busy Davies "king of the heaving bosom and glimpsed buttock," and both are in evidence here; a modicum of backside blurring appeared to be required.

Any mucking around with stodgy classics inevitably prompts some whining - "Give Me Plain Jane, Not Soft Porn" read the headline on one "Sense and Sensibility" commentary in a British paper - but, for the most part, the Austen offerings were enthusiastically received. And the adornments to the core story in "A Room With a View" are generally to good effect.

So is a casting gimmick: George Emerson, the aforementioned rogue, and his father are played by Rafe Spall and his father, the always enjoyable Timothy Spall. Mark Williams seems to be having a wonderful time as Mr. Beebe, a clergyman who, if not quite out of the closet, certainly has the door ajar.

Nothing wrong with any of this; most century-old stories could use a little energizing. But what Davies does by way of a postscript is another matter entirely. It seems out of step with the rest of this well-acted, stylish production.

Forster ended, of course, with Lucy choosing George. Davies, though, projects ahead to 1922, just after World War I. The details won't be revealed here, but suffice it to say that Davies weirdly goes for poignancy and prurience.