What an interesting load of responses to a bit of light entertainment! I fear that the general viewing public are unable to move on from the TV of their childhood, and accept that this is yet another screen adaptation of a light and humorous novel. To suggest that HE Bates would be turning in his grave misses the whole point of fiction - he wrote it, we read it, we put our own experiences and background into our reading, and somewhere there might be a match with what the author had in mind and what we imagine, but it makes no differences if there isn't. But nonetheless it is still a piece of fiction.
Those who claim to know Bate's intentions clearly don't - I grew up a few streets away from Bates, I have walked the streets, towns, villages and countryside that he did, as my mother pointed out the parks, churches, rivers, and fields that feature in his works. My aunt was a friend of his mother; I have a signed copy of his autobiography. But that does not me put to any advantage in reading his novels, it just adds to my pleasure to see familiar places in his works.
For all of those complaining about historical inaccuracies, let's dispel that first. The novel was published in 1958, and the first screen adaptation was by MGM in 1959, 'The Mating Game'. The whole story is transposed to the USA, and Mariette was played by Debbie Reynolds. Do you think Bates cried that his lovely Kent village became a town in America? Of course not, he took the royalties and would have been so pleased to have reached a wider audience. It is a piece of fiction, not a history book - the persons adapting it now can do so how they want to, and meet the new audience. Art, and Bates was certainly an artist even if not very profound in this light novella, can be interpreted by new readers, and new directors.
If you are unable to get an ITV series from 1991 out of your head, nor the theme tune, then why even bother watching this. Buy the DVD and be happy, but appreciate that audiences have moved on, grown up, and new ones born. We might be fed up with entirely white casts portraying what was then rapidly becoming a multi-ethnic society And finally, if you are giving this programme one star because you saw a person of colour in a supposedly Kent village of the fifties, then you seem to have a very restricted approach to pleasure - this is light entertainment for a Sunday evening on a popular channel. Why not watch it as such? As I said, I grew up in the same town as Bates, in the decade in which this work is set, and we were not at all surprised to see people of colour, indeed all nationalities. Does it make a difference to you if a character first played by an American actor, then a white British actor, is now played by a black actor? Forget the history, history doesn't dictate fiction - fiction is for your own imagination, not your indignation.
Those who claim to know Bate's intentions clearly don't - I grew up a few streets away from Bates, I have walked the streets, towns, villages and countryside that he did, as my mother pointed out the parks, churches, rivers, and fields that feature in his works. My aunt was a friend of his mother; I have a signed copy of his autobiography. But that does not me put to any advantage in reading his novels, it just adds to my pleasure to see familiar places in his works.
For all of those complaining about historical inaccuracies, let's dispel that first. The novel was published in 1958, and the first screen adaptation was by MGM in 1959, 'The Mating Game'. The whole story is transposed to the USA, and Mariette was played by Debbie Reynolds. Do you think Bates cried that his lovely Kent village became a town in America? Of course not, he took the royalties and would have been so pleased to have reached a wider audience. It is a piece of fiction, not a history book - the persons adapting it now can do so how they want to, and meet the new audience. Art, and Bates was certainly an artist even if not very profound in this light novella, can be interpreted by new readers, and new directors.
If you are unable to get an ITV series from 1991 out of your head, nor the theme tune, then why even bother watching this. Buy the DVD and be happy, but appreciate that audiences have moved on, grown up, and new ones born. We might be fed up with entirely white casts portraying what was then rapidly becoming a multi-ethnic society And finally, if you are giving this programme one star because you saw a person of colour in a supposedly Kent village of the fifties, then you seem to have a very restricted approach to pleasure - this is light entertainment for a Sunday evening on a popular channel. Why not watch it as such? As I said, I grew up in the same town as Bates, in the decade in which this work is set, and we were not at all surprised to see people of colour, indeed all nationalities. Does it make a difference to you if a character first played by an American actor, then a white British actor, is now played by a black actor? Forget the history, history doesn't dictate fiction - fiction is for your own imagination, not your indignation.