‘The Forsytes’ Season 1 Outfits Are Fit for Intergenerational Soapiness
'The Forsytes' soapiness is woven into its Season 1 costumes.
Something about The Forsytes has surprised me. Beyond the iPhone faces of the two male leads and lightly saucy voiceover narration; beyond the revved-up sibling rivalry between James (Jack Davenport) and Jolyon (Stephen Moyer, aka Vampire Bill from True Blood) over whose son will run the family brokerage house in their own two-person version of Succession; beyond even a few episodes of Soames being an appealing potential husband for Irene Heron (Millie Gibson). Early on, I realized that The Forsytes is a costume drama without much in the way of truly dramatic costuming.
The costumes are good, they’re just not as memorable as I expected. In a TV landscape full of very costume-forward historical series like The Gilded Age, The Buccaneers, Bridgerton, and Wolf Hall, The Forsytes leans into its intergenerational soapiness at the expense of other considerations.
That’s not to say the costumes aren’t worth commenting on! Characters’ clothes always tell us about their frame of mind or where they fit in their family and the broader social hierarchy. Let’s get into some of the nitty-gritty, and what it prompts me to wonder about the next two seasons.
