Author Topic: PBS Masterpiece Classic 2009-2010 (Read 124461 times)

marcie · « **Reply #200 on:** February 12, 2010, 12:26:31 AM »

Masterpiece Classic 2010 brings back favorite authors and introduces new authors and programs. See the complete 2010 MASTERPIECE CLASSIC schedule.

NOW DISCUSSING

Small Island
April 18-25, 2010, 9pm
Two 90-minute episodes
When an ambitious Jamaican woman moves to gritty post-war London, she finds that the "Mother Country" is not the land of opportunity she had imagined. Starring Naomie Harris, Ruth Wilson and Benedict Cumberbatch and based on the award-winning, bestselling novel by Andrea Levy. Small Island is available for online viewing April 19 - May 25 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/smallisland/watch.html

PAST PROGRAMS

The Diary of Anne Frank
April 11, 2010, 9pm
One 120-minute episode
The most accurate adaptation of Anne Frank's account of hiding from the Nazis stars newcomer Ellie Kendrick as the maturing teenager undergoing an extraordinary ordeal. The Diary of Anne Frank airs on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2010. Watch the program online from April 12 through May 11 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/annefrank/watch.html

Sharpe's Peril
April 4, 2010, 9pm
One 120-minute episode
The adventures of Colonel Richard Sharpe continue as he leads a ragtag party of civilians and soldiers on a march across India, with the murderous army of an opium lord in hot pursuit. Watch it online through April 27 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/sharpeschallenge/watch.html

Sharpe's Challenge
March 28, 2010, 9pm
One 120-minute episode
Soldier-adventurer Richard Sharpe comes out of retirement to quash a rebellion in British India. Sean Bean returns as the swashbuckling hero of this series based on Bernard Cornwell's novels. Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi guest stars. Watch it online through April 27 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/sharpeschallenge/watch.html

The 39 Steps
February 29, 2010, 9pm
One 90-minute episode
Secret agent Richard Hannay battles German spies on the eve of World War I in a riveting and romantic new version of the thriller by John Buchan. Rupert-Penry Jones (Persuasion) stars as Hannay. Learn more about this series at http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/masterpiece/39steps/39steps.html. Watch the full episodes online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/steps/watch.html through March 30. Email JoanP for a copy of the book for only the cost of postage. Read some of Buchan's works online at http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a285

Persuasion (Encore Presentation)
February 21, 2010, 9pm
One 90-minute episode
Sally Hawkins plays Jane Austen's Anne Elliot, a woman destined for spinsterhood after refusing a proposal eight years earlier. Then her spurned suitor reappears. Learn more about this series at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/persuasion/index.html. The text of Jane Austen's Persuasion is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/105

Northanger Abbey (Encore Presentation)
February 14, 2010, 9pm
One 90-minute episode
In a medieval house that appeals to her most lurid fantasies, romance addict Catherine Morland (Felicity Jones) begins a relationship with the younger son of the estate in this adaptation of the Jane Austen novel. Learn more about this series at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/northangerabbey/index.html. The text of Northanger Abbey is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/121/121-h/121-h.htm#2HCH0001

January 24-February 7, 2010, 9pm
Three episodes.
A new adaptation of Jane Austen's comic tale of a headstrong young woman's failed matchmaking schemes. Learn more about this series at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/emma/index.html.
See resources provided by PBS at http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/masterpiece/emma/emma_links.html

January 10-17, 2010, 9pm
Return to Cranford
Two 90-minute episodes.
The construction of a new railroad line is at once thrilling and threatening to the residents of Cranford. This sequel stars Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton and Julia McKenzie. New faces include Jonathan Pryce and Tim Curry. From the creators: “We leapt at the opportunity to include two strands from Cranford that we hadn’t been able to include the first time around, introducing two colourful new characters: Lady Glenmire (Celia Imrie) and the conjuror Signor Brunoni (Tim Curry). We looked for additional source material to weave into the mix, and finally settled on two very different Gaskell stories that excited us: The Moorland Cottage and The Cage At Cranford." Learn more about this series at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/cranford2/index.html.

December 20, 2009-January 3, 2010, 9pm
Cranford (Encore Presentation)
Three episodes (Episode one 120 minutes; episode two 60 minutes; episode three 120 minutes).
The Emmy-nominated drama about a small English village in 1842 on the brink of change — where some find romance and opportunity, and others fear the breakdown of social order. The series is based on three Elizabeth Gaskell novels: Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr. Harrison's Confessions. Learn more and see a preview at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/cranford/index.html.

Discussion Leaders: JoanP and marcie

marcie · « **Reply #201 on:** February 12, 2010, 12:26:57 AM »

Below is a photo of (from right to left): JoanP, PatH, Maryal, Maryal's daughter Susan, and Karen Fowler in red.

Thanks, JoanK.

marcie · « **Reply #202 on:** February 12, 2010, 02:47:18 PM »

FYI everyone: If you go to the PBS website at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/index.html#giveaway in the middle of the page, one of the blurbs let's you click to sign up for a giveaway of a set of Jane Austen DVDs. When you complete the form you can either sign up for the email newsletter that announces upcoming PBS programs or just enter the contest.

JoanP · « **Reply #203 on:** February 12, 2010, 05:06:55 PM »

That's a nice prize! I just entered. PBS is quite generous these days.

Have you heard about the PBS presention of James Buchan's The39 Steps on Masterpiece Classic on February 28? Read more about it at
http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/masterpiece/39steps/39steps.html

Written in the depth of World War I by British public servant John Buchan (later to become Governor General
of Canada), The 39 Steps was eagerly read by soldiers in the trenches, and since then has been adapted several
times for screen, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. (A stage adaptation of Hitchcock’s 39 Steps is
currently on Broadway).

To make this experience even more enjoyable, PBS is offering our SeniorLearn readers a free copy of the book but for the postage. These free copies will be available to the first ten people who post a request in this PBS discussion - or who email JoanP at jonkie@verizon.net. Don't miss this one!

JoanK · « **Reply #204 on:** February 12, 2010, 06:49:23 PM »

I'll take one of the free copies. I loved the 39 Steps as a kid, and read all the other Hannay books, but I don't have copies now. Wonder what I'll think of it as an adult. I remember seeing the Hitchcock movie and being disappointed. But it's just the sort of book that should make a good movie.

Frybabe · « **Reply #205 on:** February 12, 2010, 07:47:52 PM »

I've never read The 39 Steps nor seen the movie. In fact, I never heard of it before now. I'd like a copy if you please. I trust we will be discussing it.

JoanP · « **Reply #206 on:** February 12, 2010, 09:56:05 PM »

Oh yes, we'll be discussing it- right Marcie? Your names are tops on the list, Joan and Frybabe. Would you mind emailing me your addresses - again?
Thanks!

Aliki · « **Reply #207 on:** February 13, 2010, 10:16:29 AM »

I have been letting reading go for so long as I studied my Near Eastern Languages and Cultures that I would love to learn about 39 Steps which is getting such good reviews. So if you have an extra copy I'd love to have one.

I believe you said stamps was a good way to pay? Have I paid for Emma yet or was I waiting to ask you about the stamps?

JoanP--thanks to you, our discussion group, PBS and SeniorLearn, I may become an inheritor of 'Western Civ' yet!!!

aliki

marcie · « **Reply #208 on:** February 13, 2010, 02:37:37 PM »

I look forward to our discussion of the PBS 39 Steps, and the book too, with those who are going to read it.

nlhome · « **Reply #209 on:** February 13, 2010, 09:10:25 PM »

Joan, I'd be very interested in a copy of the 39 Steps, if there are enough to go around.

Nan

JoanP · « **Reply #210 on:** February 14, 2010, 01:04:04 PM »

Nan, Aliki, Frybabe, JoanK, Pedln, I'm starting the list for 39 Steps - and will mail out copies just as soon as I receive them from PBS. (They never did send "Emma," Aliki - sorry.)
Will let you know if I need your addresses - will look for them later.

I'm really looking forward to reading this one - have heard so much about it.

JoanR · « **Reply #211 on:** February 14, 2010, 01:28:46 PM »

Yes, I would love to have a copy! Do you need my address?
This should be a good book and program for both my husband and myself. I don't remember having read this as a child although I managed to read every adventure story that I could get my hands on! Does our hero struggle across an icy landscape at some point or am I thinking of a different story? And I don't mean the icy river in Uncle Tom's Cabin!
Thanks so much for all your trouble in mailing out the books to us!
Joan Roberts

JoanP · « **Reply #212 on:** February 14, 2010, 01:52:12 PM »

OK, JoanR - one of the books has your name on it! Though I've saved the envelopes from previous mailings, that is the extent of my organization. It would help if you mailed it to me again.

Thanks - and by the way, I'm reading Uncle Tom's Cabin again right now - we're reading a chapter on the impact of this bestselling book in the 19th century - the scene of Eliza carrying young George across that ice to liberty is unbelievable! Especially this week as we are struggling under ice and a frozen landscape.

salan · « **Reply #213 on:** February 15, 2010, 05:31:11 AM »

Our PBS station aired Northanger Abbey last night. I am watching the Olympics, so I DVR'd Abbey to watch later. Is this airing in your area?
Sally

nlhome · « **Reply #214 on:** February 15, 2010, 09:19:25 AM »

I knew my husband would not enjoy the PBS program, so we watched the Jane Austen Book Club instead. Of course, he didn't enjoy that either. But the movie was fun and now I need to find our Austen books and read or reread.

JoanK · « **Reply #215 on:** February 15, 2010, 04:52:08 PM »

I stupidly didn't realize Northinger Abbey was being broadcast, until I missed the beginning. I liked the production, although the abbey should have been spookier.

joangrimes · « **Reply #216 on:** February 15, 2010, 05:45:22 PM »

I did not watch Northanger Abbey last night.I am not real fond of it. Just did not feel up to it last night.

I remember Listening to The Jane Austin Book Club while riding down the road in our RV with my late husband. We were participating in the SeniorNet discussion of the book too. I fell a sleep listening to the book and my husband was filling me in on what I missed. He did that often for me when I would fall asleep listening like that. Oh well those days are in the past. No
reason to drag them out.

Joan Grimes

Aliki · « **Reply #217 on:** February 15, 2010, 07:40:08 PM »

I think I need to read the book. This production had, for me, a similar ambience, a tone or theme of 'Rebecca' (the movie with the spooky housekeeper) and I think the book might clarify the characters.

It seemed short and even the parts that seemed prolonged (e.g. inside the abbey) were short.

The ending jumped up without much preceding it in my opinion.

Yes, I would like to read the book before I decide if I like the story.

I did like the ending...soppy romantic that I am!!

JoanK · « **Reply #218 on:** February 15, 2010, 09:04:43 PM »

Aliki: all we Austen fans are soppy romantics. It comes with the territory.

Frybabe · « **Reply #219 on:** February 15, 2010, 11:05:05 PM »

I just finished watching Northanger Abbey. What a hoot. I really enjoyed it. Our heroine rather naive and addicted to novels lets her imagination get the better of her. I MUST read the book.

Babi · « **Reply #220 on:** February 16, 2010, 08:23:18 AM »

You'll find the book quite different, FRYBABE. The naive, mystery-addictd heroine is a creation of the film writers for this production. The
original was not so given to flights of fancy.

Frybabe · « **Reply #221 on:** February 16, 2010, 03:32:50 PM »

Ah, Babi. That would make more sense. Still it looks like it will be a good read.

marcie · « **Reply #222 on:** February 16, 2010, 04:24:06 PM »

There is a copy of Northanger Abbey available for reading online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/121/121-h/121-h.htm#2HCH0001

In showing actual "scenes" from Catherine Morland's imagination, I think that the TV version did emphasize her flights of fancy more than the book does, but I think that the production is true to the spirit of Jane Austen's work. Catherine definitely has set herself up to see melodrama at Northanger Abbey.

From the book:

Catherine has just confessed to Henry Tilney that she has been in his mother's room. He says:

" 'If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?'

They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.
...

The visions of romance were over. Catherine was completely awakened. Henry's address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done.
...

Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be frightened. She remembered with what feelings she had prepared for a knowledge of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been created, the mischief settled, long before her quitting Bath, and it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of reading which she had there indulged."

JoanK · « **Reply #223 on:** February 16, 2010, 05:17:13 PM »

MARCIE: your quotes show exactly the difference between a book, and a TV presentation. In the book, Austen could go on at length as to what Catherine thought and felt, and have long quotes from Tilney. TV had to find some way of conveying the same thing, and used the nightmares. They were more crude than Austen (but what isn't?) but true to the spirit of the book.

"Northinger Abbey" was intended, I believe, as a spoof on the Gothic novels so popular in Austen's day, and on their readers (including Austen herself). Correct me if I'm wrong.

My one quarrel with it the presentation is Tilney: he comes across to me as mean and smug.

marcie · « **Reply #224 on:** February 16, 2010, 08:40:40 PM »

JoanK, I agree with you in thinking that Northanger Abbey is satire. Tilney did seem to me a little "removed" in some of the scenes.

Frybabe · « **Reply #225 on:** February 16, 2010, 10:12:04 PM »

Thanks for your thoughts on Northanger Abbey. I am all the more eager to read it. I have bookmarked the Gutenberg pages.

Babi · « **Reply #226 on:** February 17, 2010, 08:22:04 AM »

Ah, MARCIE, doesn't that excerpt just emphasize Austen's remarkable
insight? It is all too easy to be captivated by a 'self-created
delusion'. People approaching a situation with fixed preconceptions
will inevitably see it in a way that fits their expectations.

marcie · « **Reply #227 on:** February 17, 2010, 10:52:29 AM »

I agree, Babi. It's easy to have our perceptions shaped by many things in our background and experience.

I thought that the line in the quote above was interesting when Henry says that someone couldn't get away with atrocious acts in a country "where roads and newspapers lay everything open." It sounds as if, even in Jane Austen's time, newspapers had investigative reporters, although perhaps not the tabloids that print EVERYTHING today.

joangrimes · « **Reply #228 on:** February 18, 2010, 07:06:19 AM »

Have started to read 39
Steps.

Joan Grimes

marcie · « **Reply #229 on:** February 18, 2010, 11:05:56 AM »

Persuasion is going to be broadcast in many areas this Sunday. The following Sunday PBS will be showing The 39 Steps. Each will be shown in one 90-minute episode.

Aliki · « **Reply #230 on:** February 18, 2010, 02:23:10 PM »

Thanks marcie!

marcie · « **Reply #231 on:** February 18, 2010, 04:51:30 PM »

The text of Jane Austen's Persuasion is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/105

Aliki · « **Reply #232 on:** February 20, 2010, 12:00:16 PM »

I think I'm ready for a new Jane Austen!!

I've just taken the Bachelors of Highbury quiz--surely that's a sign!!

I'm delighted with the results, however.

Mr. Knightly @ 51%
Mr. Martin @ 26%
Mr. Woodhouse @ 11%

That's good company if you ask me!
(told you I was a 'soppy' romantic)

Aliki · « **Reply #233 on:** February 20, 2010, 12:02:51 PM »

Quote from: marcie on February 18, 2010, 04:51:30 PM

The text of Jane Austen's Persuasion is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/105

Thanks again, Marcie!

marcie · « **Reply #234 on:** February 21, 2010, 07:34:17 PM »

Aliki and all, have you seen "the men of Austen" at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/austen/menofausten.html? Click there on "Show the Men." You also can vote for your favorite.

Babi · « **Reply #235 on:** February 22, 2010, 08:25:35 AM »

Enjoyed very much fantasizing over the Austen men. I decided I really
would not care to be married to proud Darcy. Actually Ferrars and Wentworth were the two I found most appealing. Could not possibly
choose between them without a closer acquaintance. I might turn out
to prefer #3 or #4.

Aliki · « **Reply #236 on:** February 22, 2010, 10:34:57 AM »

For me it was also a tossup...this between George Knightly and Fredrick Wentworth. I suspect that Wentworth was still on my mind because of his being the most recent and also realized after further examination that it was his haircut I liked best in his larger photo, but for myself--sort of Judi Dench-ish I think. So I'll go with Knightly but only because the farmer in Emma wasn't even in the running. Neither was Mr. Woodhouse so I guess this was no accident as I'm way too old to take care of a man of his years and I didn't really care for the farmer's taste in women and wouldn't want to be the sort of woman he was attracted to!

No, I'll stick with George Knightly. He rated first in my first test and first in this one!

marcie · « **Reply #237 on:** February 22, 2010, 11:10:25 AM »

I have to go with Colin Firth (oops, I mean Darcy) :-) As Elizabeth says to her father after Darcy's proposal "Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable."

LOL, what about William Collins in Pride and Prejudice? David Bamber was so good in that role as the obsequious clergyman. There is some information about his career at http://pandp2.home.comcast.net/~pandp2/pandp2cast/bamber.html.

Aliki · « **Reply #238 on:** February 22, 2010, 01:59:13 PM »

My age is definitely starting to show!! Just the mention of Elizabeth's father in your post marcie, reminds me that I liked him even better than Mr. Woodhouse!!

marcie · « **Reply #239 on:** February 22, 2010, 03:33:47 PM »

I just watched and enjoyed the production of PERSUASION. I was able to see it ON DEMAND through my cable service. I thought the actors were well-suited to their roles. It is difficult to pack all of the story into just 90 minutes. I also enjoyed the slightly longer 1995 version with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds (though it took a while for me to like him). See http://video.barnesandnoble.com/DVD/Persuasion/Amanda-Root/e/43396039520 (the trailer is so melodramatic and misleading).

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Author Topic: PBS Masterpiece Classic 2009-2010 (Read 124461 times)