posted
As a huge fan of both the novel Wives and Daughters (though I prefer the novel of North and South to it in Gaskell's body of work) and the miniseries, which I, like OSC, think is superior to the much more popular North and South miniseries, I really enjoyed this column. However, as a costume drama nerd, I have differences with OSC.
1) Davies is one of the best screenwriters in the business - but his Brideshead Revisited was a mess. I'm not convinced it was entirely his fault, given how many screenwriters were credited in the film, and the likely legion more who were uncredited, including the director, who clearly just wanted to remake Becoming Jane, but the film says the exact opposite of the book. I can understand disagreeing with the book - but why adapt it if you are just going to spit on everything the book holds dear? (To be fair, OSC doesn't actually say the 2008 film was any good, but it seems to be included in "close to perfect" catchall description of Davies' filmography).
2) The Davies/Beckinsale/Strong Emma doesn't have the space of the Welch/Garai/Miller Emma, and it's not as prettily directed, but it contains performances just as strong, and for all that the novel is cut to the narrative bone, Davies respects Austen's dialogue far more than Welch. (That being said, I love both very much.)
3) Jonny Lee Miller was a star long before Emma - in his original review of Emma, OSC even mentions his (rather terrible) tv show Eli Stone. But he was also famous for Trainspotting, and rather hilariously played the romantic hero in the 1999 Mansfield Park (another terrible film, though JLM was one of the few great things about it). However, it's awesome that Elementary has given him yet another role to prove his brilliance alongside the equally brilliant Lucy Liu.
4) I've only read one Trollope (The Way We Live Now), while I've read two Gaskell, but I definitely preferred Gaskell's style and characters to Trollope's in that instance. Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
