January 08, 2009

Masterpiece News You Don't Want to Miss

If you know me well you know that I have a special passion for reading the classics. I have a bookshelf devoted to just them and I have a shelf on my DVD rack just for adaptations. PBS's show Masterpiece is a great place to find adaptations of all my favorites. I have watched or *own:

Cranford
*Sense and Sensibility
*Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park
*Pride and Prejudice
*Jane Eyre
Under the Greenwood Tree
*Bleak House
Wuthering Heights
Middlemarch
*Wives and Daughters
The Railway Children

That's quite a list. You can purchase all of these and more at the Masterpiece Shop online. Most of them are worth owning and all of them are worth watching if you love the classics.

Recently Masterpiece has been making some really great new adaptations but I've been unable to watch them without going on the long waiting list at Netflix. This year that has changed. For a limited time you can watch Masterpiece movies streaming on the web shortly after they have aired. Last Sunday saw the first half of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. You can go ans watch it now until Jan. 19th. Go here and select if you want to watch Part 1 in whole or broken down by chapters. That's it. I have super excited about this.

And while you're there, sign up for the book giveaway for Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights, their next new release airing Jan. 18-25.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the heads up. I'll check out the video version of Tess. It's a wonderful book, by the way. I found it very hard to put down. I think I actually said "NO!" aloud at one point the first time I read it.

Michele said...

I am a HUGE Masterpiece Theater fan. I mean HUGE! I think they're adaption of Jane Eyre was the best I've ever seen and was soooo disappointed I missed Cranfield. I'm currently tivo'ing Tess of the D'urbervilles so I can watch both parts together.

And I loved their Jane Austen Presents series.

So glad to know there's a fellow Masterpiece fan out there!

Petunia said...

C.B.-I've seen the older movie version, which isn't that old. I'll be watching this one to see how it compares.

Michele-I got my husband hooked on them. He watches our movies more than I do.