Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (2002) Director: Tom Hooper. Cast: Hugh Dancy, Romola Garai, Jodhi May, Hugh Bonneville.

This superb BBC adaptation of George Eliot’s novel about a young man’s discovery of his Jewish identity in the 1870s used several Malta locations.

Palazzo Parisio doubled as the luxurious Genoa hotel in which Daniel (Hugh Dancy) meets his beautiful, aristocratic mother (Barbara Hershey). He is in Genoa at the same time as Gwendolen Harleth (Romola Garai) and her brutish husband Henleigh Grandcourt (Hugh Bonneville). When this unhappy couple go sailing together and Grandcourt falls overboard and drowns, the seaborne action was filmed at Mediterranean Film Studios, with the Vittoriosa waterfront used for the harbour side scenes before and after the sailing trip. The producers originally considered filming in Genoa but found that it had become too industrialised to convince as a 19th-century port.

Malta TV Trivia: In the 1960s, Louis Marks, the producer of Daniel Deronda, wrote a script about the Sta Marija Convoy that brought vital supplies to Malta during World War II, but it was never filmed.