'Belgravia' Episode 4 sees villain John Bellasis steal the show from leads Lady Maria Grey and Charles Pope
It is probably a casting misstep for a prestige show like 'Belgravia' to have a more charismatic villain, Lord John Bellasis (Adam James), than the two main leads, Lady Maria Grey (Ella Purnell) and Charles Pope (Jack Bardoe), who is the secret grandson of the Earl of Brockenhurst and the Trenchards. But there you have it. Lord John has more charisma than the stuffy Lady Maria and bland Mr. Pope.
Lord John, who is just waiting for his uncle, the Earl, to die so he can inherit, tells Lady Maria that they will be "king and queen" and "do whatever they like" once the estate is theirs. In fact, he does whatever he likes even now, except things his current limited financial circumstances won't allow.
He shimmies across the screen, corrupting servants, starting an affair with the married Susan Trenchard (Alice Eve), stealing family heirlooms... and he does it all looking like he has a pulse and a personality. Charles Pope and Lady Maria Grey, on the other hand, look like they are doing impressions of the Victorian upper class, where their mannerism overshadows what the characters really stand for.
In this episode, the mystery of Charles Pope deepens as Lady Brockenhurst (Harriet Walter), Lady Maria Grey, and Anne Trenchard (Tamsin Greig) all troupe in to see Charles Pope together. John Bellasis informed of the visit in advance by his lover Susan, follows them there, tricking his uncle to get the precise address, and essentially busts in on them.
In Pope's office, Lord John unleashes a beautiful round of rapid-fire veiled insults (directed at Pope), veiled ownership (over Lady Maria Grey), and loaded questions (directed at Lady Brockenhurst). Anne is too low down the totem pole to even bother with and is simply dismissed with a raise of the eyebrows.
Then he goes right back to the arms of Susan Trenchard, who is now pregnant with his child. He gets her to travel to the Trenchards country estate to figure out if she can find out more about Charles Pope's history with the Trcenchards beyond what they have already heard about Mr. Trenchard being great friends with Pope's adoptive father. Susan's needling gets Anne Trenchard to let slip that Mr. Trenchard's interest in Charles Pope is personal, not business-related.
He already has Ellis (Saskia Reeves), the maid, sniffing around Anne Trenchard. Turton (Paul Ritter), the butler, is a bit cleverer than her and gets Lord John to commit to giving him two pounds if he goes through with the "treasonous" act of going through his master's papers.
Thankfully, Anne gets a bit of a clue that all is not right when Lady Brockenhurst tells Anne that her maid Ellis had come looking for her missing fan. Anne, whose fan never went missing, is surprised by Ellis' actions but is yet to question her about her suspicious behavior.
Lady Grey and Charles Pope are suddenly making declarations of love in this episode having met only three times before -- the first was a five-minute conversation about India and traveling and the second, a walk about the park, talking about the cotton trade and the third, in his office, where they talked of India and cotton again. Hardly topics of high romance.
And if that wasn't enough to put you off, the talk of Pope's "principles", around sourcing cotton from India rather than from places that used slaves, will induce a Himalayan-level cringe in any viewer remotely familiar with the systemic exploitation in India to increase the production of cotton and indigo to feed the mills of England.
As much as the script would have us root for the Lady Maria Grey and Charles Pope romance, it is too sudden to believe. 'Sanditon' that released earlier this year had a much better development of a period romance. Julian Fellowes, as the writer-creator, unfortunately, is a little too engrossed in the Charles Pope secret to let the other elements of the story flourish and the show suffers because of it.
'Belgravia' airs on Sundays at 9/8c on Epix.