Andrew Davies did NOT just pull an Atonement on me!!!!! (For those of you who have yet to watch PBS's new adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With a View, I won't give it away, but I will leave you with one word to describe a fabricated plot twist: APPALLING!
(And what's with the hint of a hook-up at the end??? No grazie.)
Thank god for separated-at-birth-from-Joan-Cusack Sophie Thompson as Charlotte Bartlett and Elizabeth McGovern as Mrs. Honeychurch (whom I LOVED as Marguerite Blakeney in A&E's The Scarlet Pimpernel and was thrilled to see again.) Besides being predictably picturesque, I was unimpressed. I liked Lucy, but her chemistry with George was nonexistent. Besides which, George was weird-weird, not SEXY-weird like his predecessor, Julian Sands.) Cecil wasn't nearly enough of an annoying dandy, although really, who could live up to Daniel Day-Lewis?
Remember in the definitive Helena Bonham Carter version when George Emerson holds up the plate with the question mark on it? That's sort of how I felt after watching this version. Skip it and read the novel again, instead.
Oh Andrew Davies, for shame! (I will forgive you if Brideshead Revisited doesn't bore me to tears when it's released this fall.) And I heard his version of Sense & Sensibility, still on my DVR, is excellent. Will watch that later this week.
I was very confused at the end of it. And then I went back and looked at my copy of the book, and realized he made up this new ending. Why? Why mess with it? It doesn't need to be messed with. Shame on you indeed, AD!
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