The Harlot's Progress. Channel 4. Shown 2.11.2006 Interesting to see the eighteenth century recreated on TV, in all its squalor and poverty, disease and premature death, whilst reading Frances Burney. Toby Jones plays William Hogarth in Channel 4’s televised presentation of an episode in the artist’s life. His portrayal of the man is deeply sensitive and understated, as he moves amongst the depravity and vice of London, conveying more than an honourable man, something deeper and more affecting than conscience and morals. Hogarth meets a newly arrived, and lovely, 16 year old girl from York and becomes fascinated by her, from her initial freshness and ambition, to her haughty pride and grandiose aspirations, throughout her descent into abuse, filthy whoredom, imprisonment and repeated rape, to her eventual death, pox-ridden and disfigured. Jones’s tenderness brings me to tears when her baby dies, simply by his look of accepting comprehension. He tells her the baby is sleeping, and s...
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