Cold Comfort Farm 1995

I caught the film Cold Comfort Farm on cable yesterday and now want to read the book. Always a successful adaptation I think if it makes me go searching for the book!

The film of Cold Comfort Farm is an adaptation of the Stella Gibbons novel from 1932, a parody of the doom and gloom novels of the period (DH Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Mary Webb and even further back, the Bronte sisters). Gibbons was obviously a fan of Jane Austen, as Flora Poste is an Emma Woodhouse type through and through, and Flora even has a line:

"Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion, but with a modern setting of course. For the next thirty years or so I will be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be."

Starring Kate Beckinsale as Flora Poste (I know...no coincidence that the BBC cast her as Emma in 1996) and an all star supporting cast of Rufus Sewell, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes and even an impossibly young looking Rupert Penry-Jones!

Flora is a well-to-do twenty year old London girl who finds herself orphaned and with only a hundred pounds a year to live on. She decides to impose on distant relatives who live on a badly run Sussex farm and who all seem to have deep rooted emotional issues which would have sent me running for the hills! Flora, in her best Emma style, sees the potential in not only the farm, but in each of the inhabitants and proceeds to drag them into the twentieth century all cleaned and polished!

So just make sure you are in the mood for some rather tongue in cheek parody as otherwise the OTT style of this might put you off. And I am a little undecided as to whether I should recommend the book or the film first. I leave it to my readers to decide. In any case enjoy. And watch out for "something nasty in the woodshed"!

I am off to order the book now!

Cheers!

Rufus Sewell- Actor of the Week

Rufus Sewell

Rufus Sewell is my actor of the week. He is a hot commodity this week after appearing in Zen on PBS Masterpiece Mystery Sunday. By the way, the next two Sunday nights feature the other 2 episodes (this delightful series about an Italian detective was canceled after only 3 episodes). Americans can catch up on the one from this past Sunday night on the PBS website. The rest of us are out of luck!

Rufus Sewell as Count Adhemar in A Knight's Tale

Adhemar: You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat me?

Rufus Sewell as lowlife Jasper Bloom in The Holiday

Jasper: I wish you could just accept knowing how confused I am about all this.
Iris: Okay, let me translate that. So, you are still engaged to be married?
Jasper: Yes, but, I mean...
Iris: Oh, my God.

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I always think of Rufus as a bad guy. I mean, he was truly horrible to our beloved Will Thatcher (Heath Ledger) in A Knight's Tale, one of my all time faves. He was also completely rotten to dear Kate Winslet in The Holiday. Can we ever forgive him for that? But he is a wonderful actor and has been in many beloved Period dramas.

Rufus Sewell as Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch. Be still my beating heart!

His first big Period role was as the talented, handsome but poor Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch. Check out those boots ladies!

Rufus Sewell as the hilariously smouldering Seth Starkadder in Cold Comfort Farm

OK, gaze into those eyes of Seth Starkadder in Cold Comfort Farm. And yet Kate Beckinsale seems unimpressed. Harumph!

Rufus Sewell as Charles II in "Charles II: The Power & the Passion"

OK, how many of you knew he played the titular role in Charles II: The Power & the Passion? Nobody? Well me neither although I do like the way he looks in the wig and the crown! I may have to track this one down.

If that has whetted your appetite, here are a few more Rufus Sewell films that you may want to check out!