period drama babble
Mar. 4th, 2011 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newmoonstarReal life is too depressing right now; all the scary stuff that the governer and his cronies are doing in local government is almost too unbelievable to process, even though I'm very happy and proud that people are actually paying attention, and taking action and making it known that they won't stand for it! But with all this being so weighty, I really need to remind myself that there are happy things in the world, so... period dramas to the rescue!
First off, a new Upstairs, Downstairs on Masterpiece Theatre coming up! I'm very curious about this one, it's got a good cast, it's set in the 20's, and never having seen the original series, I don't have to worry about whether it will live up to the original. I'm kind of bereft at the lack of adaptations of classic literature this season, though. Downton Abbey, though I have gotten interested in it, is a new piece; and so was the utterly dreadful Any Human Heart. (Just reading the synopsis and watching the first few minutes was enough to tell me I could skip that one! A sad reminder that even British TV can be as crappy as ours.) I've come to rely on a fresh dose of Dickens or the Brontes and I feel a little cheated without it! Although my greatest wish is that they'd move on to some new territory within the canon of 'great literature'. Even I think I'll keel over if I have to watch one more version of Emma or Oliver Twist. What about Agnes Grey? What about a Mystery series featuring the Lord Peter Wimsey short stories as hour long episodes? There's lots of great literature that has never been explored on screen before. I'd be really excited to see something new.
And I'd especially be happy if they left Jane Eyre alone forever. In all the years that film has existed, they've only managed to make one adaptation that even remotely captured the flavor of the novel itself, and all the others were so resoundingly, stinkingly awful, that they gave me a very false notion of what the book was and scared me away from it for a very long time, until I finally saw the 2006 series which turned my notions on their head and led me to what's now my favorite book. I'm not going to subject myself to the torture of seeing the new movie version, just the terrible casting alone made me want to vomit, and there's no way there could be any costumes in it gorgeous enough to be worth enduring Michael Fassbender as Rochester. He could very well be a nice person in real life, but there's just something about him on screen that radiates sleazy, creepy, evil, souless nastiness. And not having an English actress as Jane would be a huge distraction, since I'm picky about accents. Hopefully there will be at least one other new period drama out this year, so that I'll have something to see in theaters!
First off, a new Upstairs, Downstairs on Masterpiece Theatre coming up! I'm very curious about this one, it's got a good cast, it's set in the 20's, and never having seen the original series, I don't have to worry about whether it will live up to the original. I'm kind of bereft at the lack of adaptations of classic literature this season, though. Downton Abbey, though I have gotten interested in it, is a new piece; and so was the utterly dreadful Any Human Heart. (Just reading the synopsis and watching the first few minutes was enough to tell me I could skip that one! A sad reminder that even British TV can be as crappy as ours.) I've come to rely on a fresh dose of Dickens or the Brontes and I feel a little cheated without it! Although my greatest wish is that they'd move on to some new territory within the canon of 'great literature'. Even I think I'll keel over if I have to watch one more version of Emma or Oliver Twist. What about Agnes Grey? What about a Mystery series featuring the Lord Peter Wimsey short stories as hour long episodes? There's lots of great literature that has never been explored on screen before. I'd be really excited to see something new.
And I'd especially be happy if they left Jane Eyre alone forever. In all the years that film has existed, they've only managed to make one adaptation that even remotely captured the flavor of the novel itself, and all the others were so resoundingly, stinkingly awful, that they gave me a very false notion of what the book was and scared me away from it for a very long time, until I finally saw the 2006 series which turned my notions on their head and led me to what's now my favorite book. I'm not going to subject myself to the torture of seeing the new movie version, just the terrible casting alone made me want to vomit, and there's no way there could be any costumes in it gorgeous enough to be worth enduring Michael Fassbender as Rochester. He could very well be a nice person in real life, but there's just something about him on screen that radiates sleazy, creepy, evil, souless nastiness. And not having an English actress as Jane would be a huge distraction, since I'm picky about accents. Hopefully there will be at least one other new period drama out this year, so that I'll have something to see in theaters!
