Beautiful Underrated Mini-Series

POSSIBLE SPOILER

I first saw this when I was in high school -- it aired on Masterpiece Theatre -- it was among some of the first period Brit dramas I watched and certainly started off an affection that continues in my middle-aged life now. The other BBC shows I fondly remember include Love for Lydia and The Duchess of Duke Street.

But back to Flambards... the acting in this is lovely, especially by lead Christine McKenna (Christina) - it's interesting how she has gone onto becoming a producer and has done little acting since. Sebastian Abineri (Dick) was a child actor (Queen Street Gang) who has continued to work, but no one from the production went on to greater fame. Paul Ahmet who plays Tizzy and the actress who plays his mother, Violet, never made another film (at least according to IMDB).

It's really amazing how after almost 30 years, this series has stayed with me. I bought the DVD box set awhile ago and only watched it again, finally, last week. I was stunned at how much of the dialogue I remember from my only viewing and how moved I was by the story. I never saw it when A&E rebroadcast it (apparently w/a lot of comercials) in 1990, just the original U.S. showing.

I absolutely adore the love story between Christina and Dick. From the very beginning, within the first couple of hours, you see their profound connection and attraction. She goes on to marry Will -- and that relationship is very sweet and based in common ground -- but theirs, while affection based, never seemed as deep as the connection between Dick and Christina. I love the scenes where he comes back to run Flambards and how they begin to work together and finally she reveals her feelings for him.

As a teenager I imagined what their life would be like following the end of the story on screen and as an adult I did too. They are a great literary and on-screen couple.

I was very dismayed to find out that K.M. Peyton wrote another Flambards book after the series ended in which Christina falls in love with Mark -- that seems so out of character and reverses everything that was set before. The previous books (which I also read) rightly set the cousins at odds -- Mark is awful (and that actor's teeth! eee)and there's no way that a mature Christina would finally fall for him. I haven't read Flambards Divided and I don't think I will. I like the idea of imagining Christina and Dick, Tizzy and Isobel and their own children, running Flambards....