Review of Emily of New Moon

after the relatively lighthearted tales of life around the turn of the century in rural Prince Edward Island, brought to the viewer in Anne of Green Gables, and Road to Avonlea, it was almost hard to watch, to have to endure the dark depressing episodes in the life of young Emily Murray and her misbegotten family in this new and (thankfully) short-lived series from the works of E M Montgomery... a series filled with incidents covering madness, murder, treachery, ghosts, religious intolerance, betrayal, disease, lost unrequited love, such as hasn't been seen since the novels of Charles Dickens... The mood of most of the episodes being so intense, it seems to have been reflected in the performances themselves, with the result that it was so rare that any of their characters were allowed even a brief moment of happiness and when it came, you were left waiting, watching for the moment when that moment would be shattered by even more doom and gloom... Viewers obviously did not take to this series as happily as they did Avonlea and Green Gables...it may have reflected a much more realistic portrayal of a way of life in bygone rural Canada, but unrelenting misery is not a promising premise for family viewing...