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December 17, 2006: Carrie’s War
This week’s Masterpiece Theatre tells the story of Carrie Willow, a 13-year-old English girl who is sent with her younger brother, Nick, to live in the Welsh countryside during World War II to escape the London bombings. But the tale is actually a love story, a sweet, adolescent yarn about Carrie and the slightly older Albert Sandwich, another boy who is in the group of London refugees sent to Wales during the war. Carrie is a responsible, nervous but tough-minded lass, and Albert is wise and scholarly. He comes off somewhat arrogant but is secretly shy and, of course, terribly in love with our heroine Carrie. It’s a children’s book, but trust me, adults can get on board as well.
Carrie and her lovably mischievous brother are placed in the home of Mr. Evans (Alun Armstrong, who played Bucket in Bleak House) and his sister, Louisa (Lesley Sharpe). Mr. Evans is a hard man, religious, penny-pinching, and, most of the time, pissed off. His homekeeping habits are characterized by his insistence that residents in his home not walk on the new carpet on the stairs, which results in everyone in the house having to climb the stairs by straddling the carpet, cowboy-style. He’s also a terrible tyrant to his mousy but kind sister, and Carrie and Nick live in mortal fear of him. But one day they are sent to collect a holiday turkey from the home of Mr. Evans’ older sister, one Dylis Gotobed (Geraldine McEwan, known to you all as Miss Marple). Mrs. Gotobed lives in a huge and elegant manor house out in the woods, and her home is managed by the lovable Hepzibah Green, a jolly, tubby woman who is rumored among the local townsfolk to be a witch. Another resident of Mrs. Gotobed’s house, known as Druid’s Bottom, is an at-first frightening gentleman called Mr. Johnny. As it turns out, Mr. Johnny isn’t scary at all, he’s merely palsied with a bit of a speech impediment. What’s more, an additional resident of the Gotobed home ends up being the much-mooned-over Albert Sandwich. So the Willow children and the Gotobed household all become fast friends.
But trouble arises when Carrie learns of a longstanding family feud between the wealthy Mrs. Gotobed and her miserly shopkeeper brother Mr. Evans. Throw in a closet full of silk ball gowns, a missing will and testament, some sweetly clumsy preteen kisses, a handsome and dapper American officer, and a cursed, centuries-old skull of possibly African origin, and what you get is a honking good mystery/love story; it’s like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but without the lion and with a Miss Havisham instead. The movie stays wonderfully true to the book, perfectly capturing each of the difficult and complex characters and skillfully demonstrating the book’s biggest theme, which is that one mustn’t judge people by their exteriors, because the meanest, scariest people are often the kindest people on the inside.
Next week’s Masterpiece is a rerun — Pollyanna — so I’ll see you all in January!
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Dec 17, 2006 11:33 PM
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