A Romance of the Raj

The Far Pavilions, HBO, April 22,23,24, 8p.m. E.S. T.

Come to exotic India! Surrender to the magic and romance of the East! See snowcapped peaks and dusty plains. Visit pastel palaces and brooding temples. Ride painted pachyderms, wander through crowded bazaars, and puff contentedly on a hookah. Meet scheming maharajahs and delicate princesses with those funny earrings in their noses. Sit back as lissome native girls in swirling saris dance for your delight. Take advantage of this once in a lifetime offer: witness the traditional Indian suttee, a barbaric ritual in which a willing Hindu widow is cremated on the funeral pyre of her husband. India. A country of contrasts. See it for yourself.

The Far Pavilions, a six-hour, three-part mini-series on HBO is a sumptuous package tour of 19th century India under the British Raj. The lush, romantic travelogue leisurely wanders the flowery landscape of Victorian fiction, where swashbuckling heroes die happily for Mother England, wasp-waisted ladies in corsets palpitate at the prospect of illicit love, fawning natives in turbans plot palace intrigue, and florid, harrumphing senior officers shoulder the white man's burden. The production, based on M.M. Kaye's 1978 bestseller, represents pay cable's first real venture in "long-form" television. Filmed on location in India at a cost of more than $12 million, The Far Pavilions deserves the accolade once reserved for large-scale Hollywood epics: every dollar (and rupee) is "right up there on the screen." Cecil B. DeMille could not have called for more elephants.

The story covers some twenty years, from the great mutiny of 1857 until the second Afghan War, as seen through the intense, close-set eyes of Ashton Pelham-Martyn (Ben Cross). Like Kipling's hero Kim, Ashton is the orphaned child of English-speaking parents. Raised by an Indian nurse, who passes the boy off as her son Ashok, he is discovered by Britons and shipped home to England to become a proper sahib. As a young man, he returns to India, joins the crack Corps of Guides, valiantly leads expeditions into the Afghan mountains, and suffers a grievous casualty at the hands of a snippy English woman who rejects his of fer of marriage. But another pair of mascaraed eyes is just around the corner.

When Ashton is ordered to accompany an elaborate royal wedding procession across India, he falls desperately in love with Princess Anjuli (Amy Irving), a half-caste whom he first adored as a child. Before they can ride off into the crimson sunset, numerous complications arise, including a valiant defense of the British embassy in Kabul and the rescue of Anjuli from a cruel marriage and the threat of suttee. So much for narrative.