About The Forsyte Saga

The Forsyte Saga is the story of a love polygon that shifts like a kaleidoscope. Soames loves Irene, Irene loves Bosinney, and later, young Jolyon. Young Jolyon's daughter June loves Bosinney, young Jolyon loves his daughter's nanny Helene, and later, Irene. Old Jolyon, improbably, is infatuated with Irene.



Thirty-three years after public television viewers first thrilled to the larger-than-life story of the Forsyte clan, John Galsworthy's sprawling epic has arrived on Masterpiece Theatre in an all-new eight-hour version.

Damian Lewis (Band of Brothers) stars as acquisitive, tormented Soames Forsyte with Gina McKee (Notting Hill) as his reluctant bride, Irene. Also appearing are Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower) as the passionate architect Bosinney, Rupert Graves (Take a Girl Like You) as young Jolyon Forsyte and Corin Redgrave (Shackleton) as the family patriarch, old Jolyon.

Originally published in three volumes between 1906 and 1920, The Forsyte Saga was the most popular book on American college campuses during the Roaring Twenties, and it helped win Galsworthy the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.

The book garnered a new generation of fans through the celebrated twenty-six part BBC adaptation starring Eric Porter and Susan Hampshire, which premiered in the United States, on public television, in 1969.

Building on the success of that series, producers at WGBH Boston launched Masterpiece Theatre, designed to bring superb British drama to American audiences every week.

To this day many veteran PBS viewers are convinced they saw the original Forsyte Saga on Masterpiece Theatre.

"It's the best program we never did," quips executive producer Rebecca Eaton.