Skip to main content

Mansfield Park (BBC 1986)

Captain’s Log, Supplemental

Blog book giveaway:
To enter, go to the blog links below and post a comment there.
Valley of Betrayal by Tricia Goyer
It Happens Every Spring by Gary Chapman and Catherine Palmer

Jane Austen miniseries

I love Jane Austen. She’s my favorite classic writer, and I even bought audiobooks of her novels and listen to them again and again.

I also love Amazon.com and visit my Gold Box every day (not that I buy that often). One day I had a deal for the entire set of DVDs of miniseries produced by BBC of Jane Austen’s novels.

No, I didn’t buy the set—but it made me curious, and so I put the miniseries on my Netflix queue. The miniseries are all rather old.

I just finished Mansfield Park. I’m quite divided on it.

Costumes: score 4. They were mostly really rather nice, appropriate to the character’s background and income, and not too flamboyant, although there were several places the women’s headgear was just way over the top.

Acting: score 4. I liked the actors quite a bit. I think they each played their parts very well, although there were a few moments in the later episodes where the actress who played Fanny seemed a bit out of character.

Camera/filming: score 2. I didn’t give it a 1 because there were a few scenes near the end of the miniseries that were rather well shot. On a whole, it was awful. The very first scene shows the camera panning in, and the shot jostles around like it’s being done on a home camcorder. Other scenes where the characters are walking or in a carriage are horrendous. I got terribly sick watching it. It gets better in later episodes, but the poor quality astounded me. How does BBC get away with such poor camera direction? This was appalling.

Musical score: score 3. Low budget, but well-performed with a minimum of instruments.

Script: score 4. To be honest, I wavered between a 3 and a 4 because the ending is even less romantic than the way it ends in Jane Austen’s novel. However, the whole has very good dialogue—mostly taken from the novel, but structured well in the scenes. The acting direction is also rather nice.

That gives an average score of 3.4 out of 5.

I heard from other reviewers that others of the miniseries are better done, so I’m still persevering in watching them all.

I think I must really be a Jane Austen nut to do this. I don’t know why I love her novels so much! My favorite is Persuasion, so I’m hoping that miniseries is better done.

I read in reviews that none of these compare to the 1995 BBC/A&E version of Pride and Prejudice. LOVE that miniseries. I have the DVDs and play them way too often.

(On a side note, I enjoyed watching this version of Mansfield Park while knitting, partly because I could look at my knitting so I didn’t get motion sickness when the camera started jostling in certain scenes. Right now, I’m working on socks for Heather. I made them crew-length so hopefully she can wear it with her cowboy boots if she wants to.)

Comments

Rel said…
Camy - if you are such a Jane Austen fan, have you ever tried Elizabeth Gaskell? The BBC's miniseries of her book North & South is fantastic. It is different to P & P as it is set in a northern working class town but is equally fabulous. Let me know if you check it out!
Ruth said…
The Pride and Prejudice that is in that BBC boxed set is truly horrendous IMO. I just couldn't STAND it. Probably why I never bothered renting any of the others...perhaps I should...?

Completely agree with the above comment...Elizabeth Gaskell is WONDERFUL. The North & South miniseries is fantastic, it truly rivals the BBC/A&E Pride and Prejudice as my favorite. Also worth checking out is Gaskell's Wives & Daughters miniseries.
Geekwif said…
I've never watched any of the BBC productions of Jane Austen novels. I've heard too many horrible reviews of them.

Mansfield Park was the only Jane Austen novel that really disappointed me, so I probably wouldn't watch the movie anyway. I've considered reading it again to see if it improves on a second read, but there are just so many other works out there that I would rather commit my time to. I feel like I'm betraying Miss Austen to say it, but maybe I can redeem myself by coming back to P&P over and over again. :)
Carolynn said…
Well I'm jealous! My favorite version of Pride & Prejudice is the A&E version too. Wish I had it dvd:)
Have you ever read the Austen Series of books by Debra White Smith?
She takes all Jane Austen's books and writes them in a modern setting....they're awesome! (in my opinion):)
Pfingston said…
I love Jane Austen too. I've seen this mini-series and the truth is . . . it's just plain hard to put into a movie what you already have played so well in your head! Another reason I was dissapointed with "One Night with the King" . . . cause it didn't line up with what was in my mind's eye.
Anywho . . . still love the story, still love the little escape that those BBC's do provide.
Pfingston said…
Oh and just a heads up, Persuasion wasn't done much better. But I'm with you with Pride and Predjuduce . . . . own the DVD's myself.

Popular Posts

I got my cover!

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Blog book giveaway: To enter, go to the blog links below and post a comment there. Eyes of Elisha by Brandilyn Collins Tangerine by Marilynn Griffith I GOT MY COVER!!!! What do you guys think?

Toilet seat cover

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Update August 2008: I wrote up the pattern for this with "improvements"! Here's the link to my No Cold Bums toilet seat cover ! Okay, remember a few days ago I was complaining about the cold toilet seat in my bathroom? Well, I decided to knit a seat cover. Not a lid cover, but a seat cover. I went online and couldn’t find anything for the seat, just one pattern for the lid by Feminitz.com . However, I took her pattern for the inside edge of the lid cover and modified it to make a seat cover. Here it is! It’s really ugly stitch-wise because originally I made it too small and had to extend it a couple inches on each side. I figured I’d be the one staring at it, so who cared if the extension wasn’t perfectly invisible? I used acrylic yarn since, well, that’s what I had, and also because it’s easy to wash. I’ll probably have to wash this cover every week or so, but it’s easy to take off—I made ties which you can see near the back of the seat. And...

Cover Reveal + New Logo for Year of the Dog, a Mahina Security Novel

A New Look for Year of the Dog (and a Behind-the-Scenes Oops!) What do a dog trainer, a security expert, and a nearly-naked book cover have in common? Let me explain. 😅 Year of the Dog is the first book in my Christian romantic suspense series, Mahina Security, set in beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) Hawaii. It features quirky humor, family tensions, sweet romance, and a mystery involving a missing person—and it’s now available to read in the Christian suspense anthology, Danger in the Shadows , on Kindle Unlimited ! But before that happened, I had a bit of a cover mishap… While creating the ebook cover, I realized that the original stock photo made my heroine look, well, completely nekkid. 😳 She’s actually wearing a tube top in the image, but when I cropped it for the ebook, the top disappeared—leaving her looking very PG-13. To fix it, I did some Canva magic on a strappy top from another image and stuck it onto the model (so she’s decent now). But when I resize...

Excerpt - A HUNDRED YEARS OF HAPPINESS by Nicole Seitz

Captain's Log, Stardate 03.05.2009 Update: Sorry, this giveaway is closed. A Hundred Years of Happiness by Nicole Seitz A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence. Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found. In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father, by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother, who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain. They're all longing for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin. From the beloved author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass...

Favorite chocolate?

Captain's Log, Stardate 04.22.2008 Lately I’ve been on this chocolate kick. Normally, I’m not a huge chocoholic like Captain Caffeine. I enjoy chocolate, but if given a choice, I’ll usually choose a fruit or custard/creamy dessert over a triple decadence chocolate layer cake or a chocolate-lovers’ downfall brownie. But lately, I’ve been eating dark chocolate squares. I think it started when I went into Joseph Schmidt gourmet chocolate shop in Santana Row. We’d gotten Joseph Schmidt truffles for Christmas, and they’d been fabulous—I can honestly say that they were as good as DeBrand truffles (author Colleen Coble’s favorite). So when I saw the brick and mortar shop in Santana Row, I went in immediately. Inside, this man was buying up stacks—and I kid you not, stacks —of the Joseph Schmidt Belgian Dark Chocolate bars. He raved about them, said they were terrific. A cashier was restocking the display case the man had cleaned out, and I snagged a bar. “I’ve got to try one, after watc...