PBS's
Masterpiece Classic (hosted by my favorite, Laura Linney) returns this week and it looks like a jolly
lineup, or a typical evening in for me. I suppose when I move back to the States, so long as I have PBS - or it still has funding - and BBCAmerica, my television taste buds will be satiated. This season, US viewers can tuck into the following: a new dose of
Cranford; the 2009 version of
Emma starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller; the 2007 version of
Northanger Abbey with Felicity Jones; the 2008 version of
Persuasion - which I just watched again yesterday - starring Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones; the 2008 Christmas version of
39 Steps also starring RPJ; a couple installments of Colonel Sharpe's adventures;
The Diary of Anne Frank; and finally
Small Island, which aired just last month on the Beeb, with Ruth Wilson, Benedict Cumberbatch, and former Spook David Oyelowo. I also noticed a sidebar advertising last year's US premiere of
Wallander, a 3 part adaption of the Swedish novels and films about a sad sack police officer trying to resolve his existence and not doing a stellar job of it. The British television version stars Kenneth Branagh, not speaking in iambic pentameter or rhyming couplets. Apparently PBS also snagged
Endgame last year. Originally broadcast on Channel 4 and starring a pair of my favorites, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jonny Lee Miller, it's a movie about the end of South African apartheid, in particular the relationship between a university professor (William Hurt) and Thabo Mbeki (Ejiofor).
