After hating the series for some time of viewing-by-inertia, I also began to hate people who give it 10 star reviews.
I give it 3 stars - because there is enough of the original books material in there to stir some nostalgia for Gerald and Lawrence Durrell books amazing storytelling.
There are some nice landscapes and enough of the artifacts of the epoch to make plausible decorations.
Pretty much everything else is wrong. Actors are miscast (Theo is but one notable exception), comic timing is off, some dialogues women rights are so out of THAT time and so of this-age politcorrect, they could only work as a self-parody. Everything in these series is adjusted to please one truly mediocre viewer, the real essence of a modern audience. Mother made into a younger, sexier, more intelligent and less alcoholic version of herself. She cooks no Indian dishes (which would cultural appropriation nowadays) and instead brings up some low-class British recipes, thanks to an eternal wisdom of script writers. Gerald Durrell made into more of a modern spoiled brat. Lawrence shown more of a deluded wannabe with no willpower than a self-confident fledgling star of an English literature, friend of other stars of the time. Leslie is made into a bumbling male idiot, a butt of all jokes, like Homer Simpson, while Margo has undergone an opposite transformation, stripped of most of her malapropisms and taught to talk about women rights, as if she was one of the modern third-wave feminists.
Save your senses and your mind, avoid this pile of garbage.
I give it 3 stars - because there is enough of the original books material in there to stir some nostalgia for Gerald and Lawrence Durrell books amazing storytelling.
There are some nice landscapes and enough of the artifacts of the epoch to make plausible decorations.
Pretty much everything else is wrong. Actors are miscast (Theo is but one notable exception), comic timing is off, some dialogues women rights are so out of THAT time and so of this-age politcorrect, they could only work as a self-parody. Everything in these series is adjusted to please one truly mediocre viewer, the real essence of a modern audience. Mother made into a younger, sexier, more intelligent and less alcoholic version of herself. She cooks no Indian dishes (which would cultural appropriation nowadays) and instead brings up some low-class British recipes, thanks to an eternal wisdom of script writers. Gerald Durrell made into more of a modern spoiled brat. Lawrence shown more of a deluded wannabe with no willpower than a self-confident fledgling star of an English literature, friend of other stars of the time. Leslie is made into a bumbling male idiot, a butt of all jokes, like Homer Simpson, while Margo has undergone an opposite transformation, stripped of most of her malapropisms and taught to talk about women rights, as if she was one of the modern third-wave feminists.
Save your senses and your mind, avoid this pile of garbage.