News: City of Vice

With so many current shows about cops and police procedure it is with great interest we heard about this series depicting the early days of detective work and featuring the famous Bow Street Runners. Unlike other series we have mentioned here before this one is not a literary adaptation but it was based on several [...]

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News: The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton & Wide Sargasso Sea

The Secret life of Ms Beeton is a period drama based on the life of Isabella Mary Beeton, a journalist and publisher, also known as the most famous domestic goddess of Victorian times. Her articles and books were widely known and considered the perfect guides to household and management. The series provides an interesting perspective [...]

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And the Oscar goes to…

The 80th Academy Awards edition will take place today and many great movies are in the run for an award (some more than one!). In this post will we mention only the historical ones, since it’s the main theme of this blog but, of course, we cannot resist to discuss the other contestants.

One [...]

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News: The Tudors

The Tudor period seems to be very much the current fashion both in books, movies and TV series. The Tudors, the series that shows a big part of Henry VIII’s reign, not only has aired in many TV screens across the globe but has also managed to win quite a few awards at the IFTAs [...]

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Top 10 Historical Heroines: Who are they?!

After our Top 10 Favourite Historical Heroes in series and movies, we felt that we needed to do our Top 10 Heroines also. This list doesn’t have a particular order, these are just those heroines we cannot resist, even if we do have a little weakness for Lizzy.

Elizabeth Bennett/Jennifer Ehle in BBC’s Pride & [...]

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Monthly Discussion: Jane Eyre (part II)

 
EPISODE 3:
Jane goes to visit her aunt who is dying. It’s clear the aunt feels some guilt for sending her away as a child and she reveals to Jane that she had an uncle to wanted to adopt her and make her his heir. After her aunt’s death Jane returns to Thornfield and finds [...]

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Monthy Discussion: Jane Eyre (Part I)

Jane Eyre is probably a story not to everyone’s liking, Gothic elements are scattered everywhere and the characters are dark, unattractive, unhappy and difficult to love. In our opinion this adaptation tries to bring Jane Eyre to the general public and not just readers and fans of Charlotte Brontë’s work, look at it as a [...]

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Mansfield Park (ITV 2007)

 
We saved for last the third and final ITV Jane Austen adaptation – Mansfield Pak. This series was, in our eyes, a real and utter disaster. Why? First of all, the scriptwriters felt they needed to give a more modern look to the story and so they changed everything they could, not only characters but [...]

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Persuasion (ITV 2007)

Two things should be mentioned before starting to analyse it. It is inevitable to draw comparisons between this series and the 95 movie featuring Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root, which is considered by many Austen fans the best adaptation of Persuasion until today. Also it has a different ending from what Austen herself chose for [...]

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Northanger Abbey (ITV 2007)

Adapted by Andrew Davies (Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility) it follows the book more or less closely, taking a few liberties sometimes a bit…astonishing (we’ll talk about it a little bit further). JJ Feild was perfect as a young clergyman, wise and sensible, who finds himself attracted to Catherine Morland’s cheerfulness. His good looks [...]

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