Noble House (TV miniseries)

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Noble House
North American DVD release
Genre	Action/Drama
Written by	James Clavell (Novel) Eric Bercovici (Screenplay)
Directed by	Gary Nelson
Starring	Pierce Brosnan Deborah Raffin Ben Masters John Rhys-Davies Gordon Jackson
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of episodes	4
Production
Executive producer(s)	James Clavell
Producer(s)	Eric Bercovici Frederick Muller
Editor(s)	Peter Holt
Location(s)	Hong Kong
Running time	376 minutes (total)
Broadcast
Picture format	Technicolor
Audio format	Monaural
First shown in	February 21, 1988

Noble House was an American television miniseries that was produced and broadcast by NBC in 1988. Based upon the novel Noble House by James Clavell, it featured a large cast headlined by Pierce Brosnan as business tycoon Ian Dunross and was directed by Gary Nelson. However, due to time restrictions, several of the many subplots from the book were removed.

This was NBC's second miniseries adaptation of a Clavell novel, the first being 1980s Shogun. Both take place in the same fictional universe (see The Asian Saga) with Noble House featuring connections to Shogun and another Clavell work, Tai-Pan.

For the miniseries, the timeframe of the novel was changed; Clavell's original novel took place in the early 1960s, but the miniseries was updated to the 1980s.

[edit] Differences from the novel

Many of the subplots from the novel were left out in the miniseries due to time restraints. For instance, the entire Sevrin and AMG arc were removed, as the series aired near the close of the Cold War. The MPs were removed, along with Peter Marlowe. Tip Tok-Toh was changed from a mysterious, unofficial contact of the Bank of China to a good friend of Dunross that often appeared at parties. The bank runs were limited to the Ho-Pak, with the Victoria and Blacs not having any loss of confidence. Finally, although First Central and Dave Murtagh were introduced, the Bank of China bailed Dunross out in return for arranging Brian Kwok's release.

[edit] Cast

Pierce Brosnan as Ian Dunross
Deborah Raffin as Casey Tcholok
Ben Masters as Lincoln Bartlett
John Rhys-Davies as Quillian Gornt
Gordon Jackson as Supt. Armstrong
Burt Kwouk as Phillip Chen
Khigh Dheigh as Four Finger Wu
Julia Nickson-Soul as Orlanda Ramos
Richard Durden as Paul Havergill
David Henry as Bruce Johnjohn
Denholm Elliott as Alastair Struan
Keith Bonnard as Tip Tok-toh
Bennett Ohta as Richard Kwang
Edward Petherbridge as Jason Plumm
Tia Carrere as Venus Poon
John Houseman as Sir Geoffrey Allison