Season 28 - Frenchman's Creek (1998-1999)
If you go into this thinking you're getting an adaptation of the book by Daphne Du Maurier, yeah, just don't go into this thinking that. Look at the tagline; "A swashbuckling pirate adventure." That in no way represents anything to do with the book. This adaptation gives the distinct impression that one day someone was watching The Last of the Mohicans and went, "YES! That's what we want! Guys with long hair jumping off things and two forces at war and a love story!" Then someone else went "Well, how about adapting Daphne Du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek? It's set almost a hundred years earlier but we can make it work!" Conveniently forgetting everything that Frenchman's Creek stands for and making it the swashbuckling adventure they fantasized it to be. Gone is the journey of one woman's discovery of herself, a period piece that is relatable to this day, and in it's place is a rather silly movie that probably has more in common with the oft maligned Cutthroat Island than with it's source material. I mean, the title "Frenchman's Creek" doesn't even make sense anymore! Because in the book the creek is the Frenchman's hideout, here it's the house he is using and the ship is just moored wherever. But long before we had Starz, which strives to make programming for women, we women would have men badly adapting our stories. To change everything to make the male more important? Just no. Du Maurier would be furious. I'm furious! Less inner struggle, more violence? Um, no thank you. But this being a Masterpiece Theatre production there is the saving grace of good casting. Tara Fitzgerald and Danny Webb brought their A game. But my heart belonged with James Fleet as Dona's husband. He has this awesome James Fleetness that makes you just always love him. I don't know if it's because of The Vicar of Dibley, but I truly think there's something great in his soul that makes this likability always shine through even when he's an ass. Of course Dona went back to her husband! There really wasn't a choice to jilt James! He made the boorish role of Harry his own and in doing so made this his movie.
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