Saturday, June 30, 2012

The best British TV period dramas?



So ….. which are the best British TV period dramas?  The best Dickens I have seen were two of his lesser-known works, Bleak House and Little Dorrit which were superior to the better-known Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.

My favorites would definitely include Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives & Daughters and North & South.  I thought that Cranford was just too “soap opera” and dragged on rather. As did Lark Rise to Candleford though it must be mentioned that some of Flora Thompson’s characters were based on cousins of mine (the Waine’s of Oxfordshire).

John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga certainly gets a nod but I much preferred the newer (2002) version to the “classic” Nyree Dawn Porter original ….. but then the later production has Gina McKee in it which explains all.  If we extend the comments to later in the 20th century then of course Brideshead Revisited is absolutely superb.

What?  No Jane Austin? What heresy is this?  Too many titles, too many versions so they all morph into one storyline. George Elliott? Her stories were way too sugary for me, especially Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner. The exception of course was Middlemarch but I am not sure the 1994 production has stood the test of time. Maybe I should give it another shot.

And the Bronte’s?  I do not think that any of the TV versions have done justice to the originals but then, I’m a Yorkshire lad.

1 comment:

Pallavi Srivastava said...

I liked North & South fairly well and Wives and Daughters too. Almost everybody seems to like Pride & Prejudice (1995), Colin Firth version but I am not very fond of it.

Downton Abbey is very expensive and among the recent ones that I enjoyed. Also, Call the Midwife was good.