Skip to main content

The Pursuit of Love - review


I read the book and liked it better than Mitford's more famous (and sequel to this), Lone in a Cold Climate, and very much enjoyed it, so I was very much looking forward to this BBC adaptation. The buzz has been very positive too but I find myself having reservations. If you can bear to sit through the first episode and a half, or perhaps even the first two, episode, and make it to the third, you will, I think, see what the reviews are raving about.

The story is one of women's lib before the time and the production looks absolutely stunning, with a great cast (including Assaad Bouab, of Call My Agent fame). 

Unfortunately, you have to sit through the first episode and a half, or perhaps even the first two, episode, and make it to the third to get the full effect. 

I can see what the producers are trying to do in that first half and a bit: translate the rebellious anarchic spirit of the main characters in a modern, pop-video idiom. They only end up with a coarse and clumsy caricature, that's not amusing and often tedious. 

This is paying a great disservice to this otherwise engaging story of friendship spiced up with fierce and social satire (something that doesn't really come across in the series), so perhaps it's better to go for the book. Or at least to lower your expectations before plunging into this three-hour romp.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at
19 comments
Read more

Rev. Peter Mullen's Blog

Rev. Peter Mullen is the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange and the rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City. Rev. Peter Mullen was also until recently a blogger. Sadly the result of his cyber labour seem to have been deleted but Google has thankfully cached some of it and I have saved a copy for posterity, just in case. The deletion of Rev. Mullen's writings might just have something to do with the fact that last week, the Evening Standard and then the Daily Mail published an article (the same article actually) about some of those very writings (even though the elements of said writings being quoted had been published in June this year, at the time of the blessing ceremony which took place between two members of the Church of England in St Bartholomew the Great - picture ). In the article, we learned what the Rev. thinks about gay people and what should be done to them: We ["Religious believers"] disapprove of homosexuality
8 comments
Read more

Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison Swap Jerseys

I am having a bit of a vacuous evening looking at images of pretty rugby players. Addidas, with its latest viral campaign, Jersey Swap , seems to be squarely aiming at the gay market with a selection of five antipodean rugby players, visitor to the website can select and see take their tops off and... well... swap jersey (those interested can create posters too). My favorites of the bunch are Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison . The pictures of their pretty faces and bulging naked torsos (excuse me while I sit down for a second!) included to this post should tell you why. A job well done for Addidas. This will go round the Internet for a while, I think.
2 comments
Read more