Customer Reviews

The George Eliot Collection (Middlemarch / Daniel Deronda / Silas Marner / Adam Bede / The Mill on the Floss)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) penned many stories and all are worth reading. These wonderful performances do justice to her work. No expense looks spared and the locations are so atmospheric that it all adds to the strong story lines and character development. It is a collection of Victorian life studies worth owning. There is an additional feature called A Scandalous Life...guess who...talk about a woman with real courage...she lived her own life against all the constraints of her time which is hard to fathom in today's world of "free everything". Women lived confined...most authors of the day were men...women wrote romances, so Mary Anne created her "George Eliot" to be taken seriously. You will recognize many of the performers including Sir Ben Kingsley as Silas Marner. The price is great for the set...you won't be disappointed!

Fabulous! Couldn't stop viewing until I'd gone through all the DVD's.
Very fine adaptations of books by a very fine Victorian novelist.
I highly recommend this collection.

George Eliot is one of my favorite authors of English literature, and my favorite of her novels is Middlemarch. This collection contains five BBC adaptations of her works, i.e. Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, Adam Bede, and The Mill on the Floss. I shall review them based on my perceptions of which were the best adaptations of the works:

Middlemarch (1994)
This 1994 BBC adaptation of Middlemarch is well-cast. Douglas Hodge plays Lydgate, a doctor who arrives in the provincial town of Middlemarch intent on setting up a new hospital. Juliet Aubrey portrays Dorothea, a strong-willed and independent minded woman who is determined to improve lives. When these two young people collide, their lives change in a manner that they had never envisioned. This adaptation, thanks to an excellent script by Andrew Davies (who also penned the script for the glorious 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle) and the great cast, bring the life of a town on the brink of the Industrial Revolution to vivid life. There's also strong performances by Rufus Sewell, Patrick Malahide, etc. `Middlemarch' never plods but engages the viewer's interest with its sense of realism and romance. As a fan of the novel, I was greatly pleased by this adaptation.

Daniel Deronda (2002)
This BBC adaptation is based on George Eliot's novel of the same name . The main character Daniel Deronda[Hugh Dancy], is a young man of unknown parentage who is the adopted son of a wealthy man, Sir Hugo, and has all the trappings of wealth, yet yearns for a 'real' purpose and searches for his identity. When the story begins, we are shown a scene where a beautiful woman [Romola Garai] is gambling at the roulette table and when Daniel [Hugh Dancy] stares at her, her winning streak comes to an abrupt end. She is intrigued by him, yet refuses to be introduced to him.
We are then shown a flashback to months earlier when the beauty, a Ms Gwendolyn is shown to be the toast of society, and is desired by the men of her society, both young and old, rich and not so rich. Gwendolyn typifies the spoilt young rich woman who tells her mother 'I hate everyone!' and posseses a fiery temperament. She attracts the particular attentions of Mr Grandcourt [Hugh Bonneville] who hides a malevolent and cruel streak beneath his sophisticated and attentive exterior. When she finds out a scandalous truth about him, Gwen flees to Europe before news that her family fortunes have been lost brings her back into Grandcourt's circle again.
Daniel's story is also no less compelling - he goes boating one day and saves a young woman who has attempted suicide. The young lady turns out to be a gifted singer and Jewess, Mirah Lapidoth [Jodhi May] who is in despair for her attempts to find her long lost mother and brother have been in vain. Daniel sends her to a friend's home to be nursed and taken care of, and pays all her expenses whilst trying to help her find her family. In the process, he inadvertently comes into contact with people whom he feels a strange affinity for and this leads him to uncover the truth of his own origins.
The action in this drama is non-stop - but I am not referring to the swashbuckling sort of action, rather the intensity of emotions and unfolding of the story of the two main characters - Daniel and Gwendolyn. Their stories though different, are also parallel for fate brings them together again. What happens to these two characters forms the backbone of the story and makes for compelling viewing. Hugh Dancy and Romola Garai do an excellent job as the leads, and the other characters are also equally credible in their roles. Hugh Bonneville makes an appropriately revolting villain, and Jodhi May plays the role of the impoverished yet gifted singer ably. The sets and score are simply beautiful as are the scenes of the English countryside and also other exotic locations.

The Mill on the Floss (1978)
This eight-part BBC adaptation of George Eliot's novel is one of the most faithful adaptations (I also liked the 1997 abbreviated version starring Emily Watson as Maggie Tulliver). This is at heart a story about tangled relationships and the fragility and fickleness of the human heart. Set in Lincolnshire in the 19th century, it explores the relationship between the Tulliver siblings, Maggie (Pippa Guard) and Tom (Christopher Blake), and of how their lives get tangled with that of their neighbor's Phillip Wakem (Anton Lesser). The hunchbacked Wakem's intellectuality attracts Maggie's interest, though Wakem is the one who becomes besotted. The fact that both patriarchs are bitter enemies and Tom disapproves, makes things worse. Personally, I found this story to be one of the most complex of Eliot's works, and really quite tragic. The production qualities are rather low-budget but this is quite a faithful adaptation.

Silas Marner (1985) & Adam Bede (1992)
I confess that the last two adaptations, i.e. Silas Marner (1985) and Adam Bede (1991) are not my favorites, and that has more to do with the fact that I've never been enamored of the novels themselves. Sir Ben Kingsley does acquit himself well though in the title role of Silas Marner, who despite having led a reclusive life for many years, changes dramatically when he decides to raise a motherless infant girl whom he names Eppie. Kingsley's performance is both touching and heartbreaking.
As for Adam Bede, the main shortcoming of this adaptation is the fact that it is too short, not to mention dull, and could have done with better casting. Iain Glen plays Adam Bede, a brash and arrogant young man and the role of Hetty the attractive farmgirl is played by Patsy Kensit (a poor casting choice). The role of Dinah is well-portrayed by Susannah Harker, and watching these characters collide makes for an interesting viewing experience though I did feel this was a weak adaptation of the novel.

Final verdict - this set is worth getting for fans of BBC period dramas, and those who love George Eliot's works.

I enjoyed watching Middlemarch. It really shows how important it is for young people to choose the proper spouse. So many people get married for the wrong reasons and two of the main chaaracters suffer many years and have to give up their dreams and aspirations because they married self-absorbed people.

Daniel Deronda was my favorite film out of this collection. It also has a similar theme. People should be careful and marry for the right reasons, no matter what.

Silas Marner was a pleasant surprise. The main character is betrayed by all and even feels that God has betrayed him. The outcome is very interesting (I wont spoil it).

Adam Bede had a very important message, but the film itself was mediocre.

The Mill on the Floss was very good, captivating, and this story also had an underlying theme that forgiveness, love, devotion, and virtue are more important than anything else and that we should consider how we live and how we treat others because all that you have can be gone in an instant. In some ways, this film left me with a heavy heart.

Overall, a good collection.

I am a big fan of George Eliot, especially Silas Marner. However, this series doesn't have captions. I am hearing impaired and really depend on captions, so I was a bit disappointed when I couldn't produce any from this set.

This set is wonderful, but the quality of Middlemarch is terrible (a doublesided disk). I have Middlemarch as PAL in the UK version, and the quality is very much better (16 Euros from holland).

My partner and I knew very little about George Eliot. We found the collection to be a treasure. Our favorites were Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Mary Anne Evans was really a diamond in the rough!

These are all accurate dramatizations of these excellent George Eliot novels. Were these theater films rather than TV series, they would deserve Oscars in many categories. Though nothing could fully convey the novels themselves, these film series should encourage many to read the originals--as intended. Highly recommended.

At this point, I haven't watched ALL of the George Eliot Collection DVDs - that's alot of TV time...but what I've watched so far has been thoroughly enjoyable. I am a Masterpiece Theater fan, and love classic literature that has been adapted to the screen. I especially enjoy those done by Andrew Davies. If you like the PBS Masterpiece Theater series, you'll love these! My only negative comment on the collection was that I just couldn't bring myself to watch the "Mill on the Floss"...it just didn't seem like it belonged in the set, and was poorly done. But that is no reason not to watch the others in this wonderful set.

I lucked out and got this for a bargain price, but twice as much would still have been tough to resist. "Mill on the Floss" is a weak link, but understandably so, a very hard adaptation to make; I live in hope that Andrew Davies will get himself back together and do a good one. The rest are absolutely sublime. If you have the means, I highly reccomend picking one up (or five).