Over the years I've read The Forsyte Saga, Nicholas Nickleby, Vanity Fair and many, many more. Until they are brought to life on the small screen so many classics look too boring to leap onto my reading list
I loved the TV adaptation of Cranford and rewatched it recently. With a cast including Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton and Julia MacKenzie, it was bound to be good! I got an audiobook read by Prunella Scales and it is now my bedtime favourite.
But I can hardly believe how different the TV series and the book are. The televised version is actually a conflation of three books: Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr Harrison's Confessions.
Mrs Gaskell's "Cranford" has no real plot. It was written as a series of short pieces about some spinsters and widows who work very hard to keep up an appearance of "gentility". It's about a changing society and strong aversion to change. Threats to the established order must be fiercely resisted - and they are! The lack of a plot doesn't matter: what I enjoyed is the insights into mid-Victorian provincial life.
Have you been inspired by classical adaptations?
Very different, my teacher gave me 1984 to read when I was 14 (back in 1970), I read it again a couple of years ago, whilst remembering the plot, the second read was much better as I could understand more
ReplyDeleteI thin we can see so much mre when we become adults. As teenagers we thought we knew everything!
DeleteYes, I have and I really wish that instead of making yet another Dickens or Jane Austen adaptation tv companies would cast their net wider, as there are lots of neglected authors who wrote cracking books that most people are unaware of.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any particular books/authors in mind?
DeleteConfession I've neither read Cranford, nor watched the adaptation. But I do love Prunella Scales!
ReplyDeleteSo sad that Alzheomer's has taken its hold. She was terrific.
DeleteI loved discovering Cranford when I was at school, and have read it since.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much when I was in my teens.
DeleteSo many wonderful classics could be adapted for television. You are right though, many of these adaptations do not follow the book.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
Cranford departs more than any other book/TV serial that I know.
DeleteYes, I have watched Cranford, more than once and British TV is a regular thing for us as we get BritBox and Acorn and our local PBS station shows a major amount of British tv. In fact, I would watch paint dry if it had Judi Dench in it!
ReplyDeleteIsn't she brilliant!
DeleteI thoroughly enjoyed watching the Cranford series on TV, never having read the original books so had no point of reference for comparison. It was made at a time when UK TV made many superb adaptions, before the current trend to rewrite everything to meet some nonsensical diversity box-ticking took over.
ReplyDeleteSome of my all-time favourite adaptions have to be Joan Hickson in Miss Marple, and the Colin Firth version of Pride & Prejudice.
Ooh, yes, they were both great and I have rewatched them. The "Marple" series on ITV was pretty dreadful, though.
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