I read a few weeks ago that Netflix was going to show a new dramatisation of Anne of Green Gables. Oh great thinks I, one of my all time favourites. Then I read another article in which the director, a woman, made it clear that things were going to be 'darker' and there would be more information about Anne's 'abusive childhood'.
My heart sank.
But I thought Elaine give it a go. So I did. I have watched four episodes each one an hour and a half long so you cannot say that I have not tried. But it rapidly became all Too Much to Bear as the joylessness, nastiness and misery of it all got to me.
It started promisingly, the actress who is playing Anne is excellent and looks much more the poor shabby orphan than the much loved eighties version did, but tv is more realistic now (whether that is a good thing or not I am not sure) and she arrives all skinny legs and short shabby dress. Matthew seems to be well cast also. Geraldine James, who I first saw many years ago in Jewel in the Crown, is Marilla and is nicely acerbic and sarcastic. So all set fair.
Then it all starts to go to pot. In the book Anne is falsely accused by Marilla of stealing a brooch and forbidden to go on a picnic. In this version she is dispatched straight back to the orphanage. Then once the missing brooch is forgotten Matthew is sent off to fetch her back, cue galloping on a horse across the island, missing the train, cadging a lift on the back of a cart on which he travels all night, arriving cold and bewildered and promptly gets knocked over by another horse and cart. To cut a very long and boring episode short, he finds Anne trying to earn money by reciting poetry at the railway station having survived a night in the open, struck up a friendship with a friendly milkman and avoiding the attentions of a predatory pedophile - yes really.
Throughout all the above we have had constant flashbacks to Anne's childhood which are repeated endlessly so we are under no illusions about the terrible time she has had. We are also given a back story, again in flashback, about Matthew and somebody he liked when he was at school who just turns out to own the shop where Matthew goes to buy Anne her dress with puffed sleeves.
All the local residents are nasty, spiteful and snide and look down on Anne, the girls at school are all little snobs and deeply unpleasant, the Barry family, apart from Diana, snotty and dim and the entire thing is a travesty.
What gets me most of all is not the straying from the story - some dramatic licence has to be allowed - but the change in the characters. As those of us who have read the Anne stories well know, Marilla takes a long he time to soften towards Anne and realise that she loves her. In this version she turns into a softer version of Mary Poppins within an hour. She also attends a meeting where the mothers there discuss feminism and how they want their daughters to grow up well educated and make their way in the world (again nothing wrong with this but it is laid on with an unsubtle trowel) and then Marilla goes home and gets all snappy with Matthew because he wants his tea and she is feeling dissatisfied. Sledgehammer time again in order to make a point.
Anne is just an annoying brat. She seems to spend most of her time in this version rushing upstairs and crashing on her bed in floods of tears or running off over the fields in a snit. Every time she lays the table the drops half the crockery, she burns the food and is generally irritating. And on the occasion when she starts to menstruate she has hysterics and starts bouncing off the wall (as we have had all these flashbacks about what a brutal time she had had in the orphanage I would have thought this would not have come as a shock but no matter). Next scene she is slumped across the kitchen table in Kevin the Teenager mode being an absolute pain. As I said, not subtle.
Well this has turned into a rant and I ranted even more when I discovered that Matthew tries to commit suicide. WHAT! That is just SO wrong.Matthew would never ever do that and this is why I gave up on watching Anne with an E.
Change the scenery, change the story (if you must) but do NOT change the characters. That is wrong on all levels.
I have read these books dozens of times and it is clear that Anne had a rotten time before coming to Green Gables and her life was not easy. We know this.
"What a starved unloved life she had had - a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Anne's history and divine the truth" And we are too.
The whole thing is just so miserable and angst ridden and in the end I gave up.
I did check out reviews though and there was a huge debate on this on Face Book and it seems you either love it or loathe it. There is no middle way.
Well I know what I think. If anybody has seen it I would be really interested to see what you all think. But oh I do wish they would just leave well alone...
Llinks to reviews
https://aleteia.org/2017/05/21/why-you-should-skip-netflixs-anne-with-an-e/
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