by Henry James
Dramatised in three parts by Denis Constanduros

Her parents having divorced, Maisie faces a future in which she will be shuttled to and fro.
(Repeated on Thursday at 9.55 p.m.)

"The wretched infant was thus to find itself practically disowned, rebounded from raquet to raquet like a tennis ball or a shuttlecock." So wrote Henry James about his thirteen-year-old heroine Maisie.
People who think that broken marriages and tug-of-war children are an innovation of recent years are in for a shock in this new serial. Maisie's parents don't get on, in fact they hate each other. "He said I was to tell you", Maisie faithfully reports to her mother, "you are a nasty horrid pig."
Throughout the story Maisie is used as a pawn, a weapon to be inflicted or withdrawn whichever will cause the most distress to the other; not only by her parents but by the partners of second marriages and other relationships.
We see this marital square dance through the eyes of Maisie, eyes that appear to remain totally innocent amid all the corruption.
(Colour)