Nord et Sud

I'm a history teacher so I'm very critical of adaptations, especially those that sentimentalize the past in any way. This is a superb rendering of the spirit of the industrial age and the many facets of class struggle within it. It's also a richly romantic love story. The acting by all the cast is uniformly excellent but Richard Armitage as Thornton is a stand-out. The BBC is well-known for their meticulous attention to detail with locations and costumes. The working 19C mills used in the film are like watching a Jacob Riis photograph springing to life. The cinematography is gorgeous and the music is outstanding. This is the best historic fiction on screen I've ever seen.

I thought this production was great - I highly recommend it to anyone especially if they enjoyed Pride and Prejudice - It took you back to another era and was thoroughly entertaining. The actors were great and any red blooded woman would have had their pulses sent raising with Richard Armitage's performance!

I also thought the sets and locations were fabulous - such details especially the 'snow' scene in the factory at the very beginning- spell binding!. So all in all even though certain details of Victorian conduct etc were thrown out of the window this production was brilliant!! I can't wait for the DVD to come out... It was so great I immediately read the book

I bought the DVD version for my wife; she liked the book and enjoyed the BBC version of Wives & Daughters. I've probably seen far too many BBC costume dramas, but we were both gripped immediately and watched the whole thing in one sitting - all four hours. The story is set mainly in England's industrial North West during the 1850s, a time when even the rich seemed on the verge of destitution.

The hero is John Thornton (Richard Armitage) a self-made mill owner, who initially appears to be an aloof and brutal tyrant (Mr. Darcy with a Northern accent). The heroine is Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe) a clergyman's daughter from Hampshire who finds it difficult to fit into northern society. Hale's family don't have a lot of money and seem out of place. She befriends the family of a union leader and causes controversy by speaking her mind about working conditions in the mills.

The story is based on a novel by Mrs. Gaskell, and the central characters go through some hardships and misunderstandings before they reach the predictable happy ending. The BBC is very good at this sort of thing. The story was well told with excellent acting, especially from Armitage, Sinead Cusack and Tim Piggott Smith. The characters were articulate and the plot was both credible and absorbing. Overall, it was an enjoyable series.

North and South is my favorite book because I like the basic story and I really love the characters, and this feeling carried over to the series. Even though the BBC Wives and Daughters series was excellent and stuck more strictly to the book than North and South - I still enjoyed North and South more because of the reasons I love the book. I also thought the acting of the whole cast was as good as anything I have seen. North and South is often compared with Pride and Prejudice and while there is a good reason for that, I actually feel it has as much in common with a Dickens tale. The book was actually first published by Dickens in his weekly paper/magazine and was viewed favorably by him. If I was to try and describe the tone of the piece I would describe it as a cross between a slightly less complicated Dickens tale and Jane Austen. I never thought I would find a series I like better than Pride and Prejudice but I have. While it came to a resolved ending as most drama series do, whether tragic or happy, - there were several relationships in this that I wanted to follow further and I was wishing it would continue.

North and South took me completely by surprise when it was aired on BBC America. I was flipping through channels and thought I was going to be tuning into the American version based on the John Jakes novels. But Elizabeth Gaskell's work on which the film is based is far more than a mere period romance. This is social commentary and a love story, the struggle of workers and masters/managers as well as the misunderstanding of the intellectuals that forms a triangle in the film that is still alive today. The lead characters all take on a social conscience that grows with their love for each other to an understanding of the different worlds that lived together in this time of radical change. But the true success of the film lies in the actors abilities to show the true emotion and change that takes place around them and in them during the course of the tale. It is unfortunate that the BBCA chose to cut out so much of the film and hopefully the DVD will be available soon for US viewers to force others into watching. A true diamond being lost in the rough. Do yourselves a favor and sit back and enjoy the excellent acting and story, then sit back and watch it again and take note of all the layers of social history being shown. Or just to watch Richard Armitage ;), sooooo good!