Anne with an E - Netflix

This is a bit how I imagine P.E.I. to look. Am prob wrong

I was an avid reader of L.M. Montgomery's books growing up. Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, Magic for Marigold - loved them all. I loved the characters, the descriptions of Prince Edward Island and L.M. Montgomery's capturing of what it's like to be a child with a vivid imagination and how much a vivid imagination can enrich your life.

So I was both excited and apprehensive about Netflix's Anne with an E.

The thing that impresses me most about Anne with an E is the casting and characterisation. The characters based on the book characters are played extremely faithfully to the books - certainly where the plot follows the plot of the books, anyway - particularly Amybeth McNulty as Anne, Geraldine James as Marilla and R.H. Thomson as Matthew. Anne isn't an easy character to play - she needs to be talkative, dramatic, whimsical and optimistic without becoming cringey or irritating. Amybeth McNulty isn't exactly how I pictured Anne, but her portrayal is no less legitimate than the Anne of my imagination. She plays Anne with complete sincerity and embodies her spirit perfectly.

The main issue I have with Anne with an E is the tone. The Anne books aren't relentlessly upbeat - sad things happen in them, the characters develop and grow up - but their general tenor is cheerful and positive. Anne with an E is dark. Bleak. The first season in particular is depressing: Anne suffers from PTSD, her future at the Cuthberts' is uncertain, and there are plenty of miserable orphanage flashbacks. Does anyone actually enjoy the orphanage scenes? Do they add anything? Once it's been established that Anne had a rubbish early life, what's the point in seeing yet more bullying flashbacks? It feels gratuitous. The bleak tone colours even the happier scenes, giving them a feeling of foreboding.

Relatedly: the new storylines. I don't have a problem with adaptations not rigidly adhering to a book's storyline, or the introduction of new characters. I've enjoyed some of the new storylines - Gilbert's friendship with Sebastian; Diana's relationship with Jerry. But some of the new storylines in Anne with an E feel a) unrealistic for the era and shoe-horned in for the sake of trying to make the plot relatable to modern viewers (e.g. Aunt Josephine's turning out to be a lesbian and her lavish party that makes LGBTQIA allies out of the most conventional of the Avonlea teens) and/or b) out of character (e.g. Gilbert becoming a stoker on a ship and delivering a baby at the age of fifteen/sixteen - this was implausible on so many levels. Why would academically-minded Gilbert, whose ambition it is to become a doctor, miss a ton of school by running off to become a ship's stoker?).

Rather than trying to tackle so many big issues - sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, persecution of First Nations peoples - I think they should have focused on a few and covered them in more depth and in a way that more accurately and subtly reflected people's varied attitudes of the era. In Anne with an E characters tend to be divided into 'caricaturistically prejudicial' and 'twenty-first century egalitarian' in their attitudes towards these issues.

Next: Anne with an E Season 3