Playing powerful Hong Kong business rivals, Brosnan and Rhys-Davies are excellent anchors for the starry supporting cast.

I could go on, but that would take away some of the fun of watching: pausing the DVD every five minutes to check the IMDB and figure out where you recognize 'that guy' from. 1 of the Secret Service, Tiffany Jones, Wonder Women and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, to name but a few.

Another advantage that a miniseries has over a regular television show is that the shorter production schedule and higher profile attracts a higher caliber of actor to smaller parts, and consequently every single role is populated by a recognizable face–especially to spy fans! Everyone in the cast is familiar, and they’re all from other spy things as varied as Bond, True Lies, The Avengers, The Saint, The Professionals, The Wild Wild West, Department S, No. Noble House sucked me in from the very start, introducing us in the first episode to a cast of fascinating characters so huge that it could never exist in a movie. It gives the material the kind of exaggerated dramatic weight associated with Greek Tragedy or silent movies, and that makes it an ideal format for adapting dense, convoluted novels like Clavell’s or Ludlum’s. (Come to think of it, that’s a lot like Eurospy acting!) This is definitely not a criticism. Furthermore, it gives those actors a license to perform Miniseries Acting, which is an acceptable prime-time variation on Soap Opera Acting befitting the material, usually involving lots of clenched teeth and raised eyebrows. It’s typified by bombastic theme music, lavish sets, high production values (for 80s television, anyway), a whole season’s worth of over-the-top soap opera drama (twists, turns, reversals and betrayals galore!) packed into several nights’ viewing, and a slew of high-profile guest stars who wouldn’t normally do TV. Yes, the miniseries (particularly in its 1980s incarnation) is not only a format (what used to be called 'long form'), but a genre unto itself. I never realized that I loved miniseries until I saw Noble House, but it leaves me wanting to see more. Noble House, co-starring Brosnan’s would-have-been Living Daylights co-star John Rhys-Davies, is great entertainment and enormously fun to watch–despite a disappointing conclusion. When Pierce Brosnan had to pass on James Bond because of his Remington Steele contract only to have the show cancelled, he drowned his sorrows in this 1988 miniseries adaptation of James Clavell’s epic novel Noble House–and he could have done a lot worse.

Noble house james clavell review