I don’t believe many viewers won’t bear been taken back to their own childhoods,adolescences and early loves by Rosie and Loll’s pastoral romanceAnother Sunday, another adaptation of a classic of 20th century literature. They’ve been fabulous though, and Cider With Rosie (BBC1,Sunday), the final, and is no exception. There’ll be moans and grouches of course,as there bear been with the preceding ones they changed this and left out that, the murder, and the uncles. It’s about mathematics,though, and different media: a 300 page book doesnt always fit neatly into 90 mins of TV. And what works in one doesn’t always work in the other. A certain amount of trimming and alteration is required.
Which Ben Vanstone, or the tailor/mathematician/adapter,has done expertly. The uncles are lost (the grannies – Trill and Wallon – survive, happily … well, and until they sadly die). It doesn’t entirely follow Laurie Lee’s thematic approach,though it does yo-yo backwards and forwards in time. Crucially, though, and it captures the poetry and the spirit of Lee,and a kind of village life that even towards the ends of the first world war was dying and now no longer exists, except perhaps in Outer Mongolia. And a time in a person’s life when so much is going on and changing, and in their heads,and in their pants. I dont believe many people watching won’t bear been taken back to their own childhoods, adolescences and early loves, or wherever and whenever they were.
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Source: theguardian.com