Anne with an E

[LilMissMetaphor]

Is anyone else watching this?

I'm not a complete book purist/Megan Follows version purist.  I don't mind when a version/adaptation is different.  That's the whole point.  But there are some changes to the storylines and characters that just don't make particular sense.  

[erunerune]

I really love this show, and the original material is a great foundation for the direction they’ve chosen to take it. Breaking Bad, Anne-style.

[AmericanRose]

I am!

I love L.M. Montgomery (though the Anne books aren't my favourite) and I even went to Prince Edward Island in 2015.

I find this version of Anne much more realistic... and well, Montgomery did drop hints that things weren't so shiny happy pre-Green Gables for her, though the books didn't feature flashbacks.

[ADoyle90815]

I've been watching this version, and I don't remember the books being like that. Then again, I still love the Megan Follows version, so it's hard to really compare.

[tabitha2]

If they wanted to make  an Anne story  darker and more realistic they could told the story of Mary Vance from Rainbow Valley who lived a much worse life than Pre Gables Anne,horribly abused and enslaved in fact and was a more traumatized character anyway. 

 

[Carm_88]

I haven't seen it, but while things were hinted at not being bright and shiny for Anne, she's so imaginative, I feel like she escapes. It's mentioned in Anne of Green Gables that she had imaginary friends and she thought up lives for them. While she was dealing with two sets of twins or the drunken husband. (I have to read it again, I'm not sure which story is which.) It seems that Anne's character is one that flies away into an imaginary happier world. Then when she gets to Green Gables, she pushes forward and becomes determined to be the best. 

As I said, I haven't seen it, but I'm not sure I could deal with it either. LOL

[PennySycamore]

I saw part or all of the adaptation last year on PBS and didn't care for it one bit.  Martin Sheen is not Matthew; Richard Farnsworth is.  Collen Dewhurst (Marilla) loved PEI so much that she bought the home on the island that was owned by playwright Elmer Blaney Harris, the author of the play Johnny Belinda.

[Jug Band Baby]

I wanted to like this program.  I'm not against reboots per se, but they better be done right.  This program made me sick instead.  Yes, yes, trauma would be real, but this series is too gloomy and seems to have a hard-on for child abuse, and it really wants Avonlea residents to look like dicks when they're characters we generally like in the books.  The actors are actually good, but the heart of the story is gone.  Anne's optimism and hope are gone, and she's just existing and depressed all the time.  There's not a sense of her friendship with Diana being so strong with Mrs. Barry is so bitchy about everything (I get that she's stressed a lot, but damn!).  Matthew's romance undercurrent with Jeannie is so out of character that I don't see him as Matthew.  A couple things I did like are Marilla's reaction to Mr. Blythe dying (they did have something of a romance long ago) and that scene where Matthew realized Jerry was trying to learn to read, so he took the cracked slate and left it for him, and I know a lot of people who thought Anne's first period was funny, but that is something rarely addressed in anything and draws a lot of controversy (anyone remember the comic strip Luann, where many newspapers wouldn't publish the strip the week she had her first period?).  Even though it's so far out of character that Gilbert shouldn't be named Gilbert, I do like seeing this small town boy travel the world with a Jamaican man (he was Jamaican, right?) and seeing different cultures, and how his friend's own mother was afraid to acknowledge him when the young white boy she was raising came out. 

I think this series would be fine if they weren't claiming it's Anne of Green Gables.  Because they did, it's going to draw comparisons to a superior miniseries.  You pull a Beauty and the Beast, and you're going to get some roasting because of falling short.  Because of things like Gilbert having his horizons broadened, I really wish they didn't try claiming this is Anne of Green Gables.

[Carm_88]

If they wanted to do a darker LMM series, why didn't they do Emily of New Moon? That is just a dark series and if they wanted to be doom and gloom, that's a good one. Forbidden love, an orphaned and mostly unloved child, some second sight stuff.