I have committed almost every frame of those movies to memory, but one of the scenes that I try to rip off as much as possible when writing romantic scenes between myself and Keegan-Michael Key in my show, Playing House, is when Gilbert proposes to Anne for the first time on that bridge in the fog. I was covered in freckles, with a temper to match, and I never had a heroine speak so directly to my soul. It was as close to a religious experience as I have ever had. I saw Anne of Green Gables, the mini-series, for the first time when I was 12 years old. But he’s still Matthew, awkward and shy he buys a rake and several sacks of brown sugar from a pretty young clerk before working up the courage to say that he wants a dress. While her foster parent Marilla (the wonderfully crabby Colleen Dewhurst) rolls her eyes at Anne’s apparent frivolousness, Matthew quietly comes to understand the important truths behind it, and he heads to the dry-goods store. Anne has her famous obsessions-red-hair sensitivity the Lady of Shalott justice dramatic phrases like “the depths of despair.” Puffed sleeves are another: fashionable, extravagant details on the kind of dress she’s never owned, expressing the glory and romance she dreams of, but, as a poor orphan, has never been able to have. But the moment that makes me tear up just thinking about it is when Anne’s elderly foster parent Matthew Cuthbert ( Richard Farnsworth) gives her a light-blue dress with puffed sleeves. There’s so much to treasure in the CBC’s 1985 Anne of Green Gables series: for example, every time that dreamy Gilbert ( Jonathan Crombie) looks at our hero Anne with love, amusement, and a proud kind of awe. We’ve rounded up a group of writers who grew up on the 1980s version to explain why that Anne-and the gentle books she springs from-are such a hard act to follow. But this new version will have to work as hard as the fictional Miss Shirley herself to win over a generation raised on the warm and cozy version.
#WATCH ANNE OF GREEN GABLES THE SEQUEL 1987 ONLINE TV#
The always-popular ginger is the subject of several new film, stage, and TV adaptations, including a gritty reimagining by Breaking Bad alum Moira Walley-Beckett that was first broadcast by the CBC and will air on Netflix starting this Friday. We are now in the midst of another Anne boom. Montgomery novels, and inspiring a generation of women to emulate the brainy, ambitious, hot-tempered, and kind-hearted Anne. (on PBS and, later, the Disney Channel), the four-hour event and its 1987 sequel, Anne of Avonlea, became instant classics-winning Emmy and Peabody Awards, reinvigorating interest in the L.M. At the time, the CBC production was the most popular TV program to ever air in Canada. In fact, Anne has inspired a number of films, TV shows, and stage productions.īut outside of Japan, one adaptation in particular-the 1985 Canadian Anne of Green Gables mini-series, starring Megan Follows and directed by Kevin Sullivan-struck a nerve. Anne is big in Japan thanks, in some part, to a 1979 anime version of Anne of Green Gables. Anne has kept the tourism industry in her home of Prince Edward Island booming, particularly among Japanese fans. The character was so immediately popular that Montgomery penned seven sequels to Anne of Green Gables over three decades. Small, smart, redheaded, scrappy, and imaginative, Anne Shirley has been winning hearts and minds ever since Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery introduced her to the world in 1908.