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:
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.
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