First: why is this being reviewed on Den of Geek? They’re all aliens, honest. The anteannae are tucked under the wigs, that’s the trick to it. Between Cooke, writer Gwyneth Hughes and director James Strong, this adaptation paints an admiring picture of Thackeray’s manipulative heroine. Quick of mind and sharp of tongue, Becky’s guile and cynicism make her feel every bit as modern as she always has, whatever the era. Becky feels more contemporary here in fact, thanks to the addition of Fleabag-style knowing looks to camera – saucily raising an eyebrow when bowed at by a hunky footman or rolling her eyes when simpered at by a wealthy bachelor. Fireworks there are, and a hot air balloon. Episode one takes Becky and co. on a night out to the famously iniquitous Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where Poldark, from the same production company, also spent the summer hanging out. (It must have been two-for-one on acrobats and monkeys in little hats.) This boutique festival, with its fortune-telling hermits and rack-punch is almost the imagined allegorical fair of the title. The episodes actually opens in said imaginary fair, with Michael Palin as narrator Thackeray setting an enchanted carousel in motion by clicking his fingers and ushering us into the “vain, wicked, foolish place”. Setting out her stall, party girl Becky is having a whale of a time riding a painted pony. It’s a symbolic way in, alerting viewers to the performance and artifice to come. Becky’s arrival in Hampshire also gives the adaptation the chance to try on a bit of nineteenth-century Gothic too, with a fog-shrouded country pile, grotesque new master Sir Pitt-Cawley MP and his menacing wolfhound “partial to a young lady”. For Becky Sharp to work, indeed, for any antihero to work, we have to enjoy their mischief despite their corruption. This Becky Sharp works. We want her to prevail over stuffy schoolmarms and moneyed dolts, and especially to prevail over snobs like Amelia’s betrothed George Osbourne. We want Little Miss Who-Does-She-Think-She-Is to take the world by storm, just as Olivia Cooke takes this episode. Cooke is so sparkling here, in fact, the one concern is that everything else and everyone else struggles to be quite as scintillating. Vanity Fair continues on Monday the 3rdof September at 9pm on ITV.
