Reviews (25)

One of our favorites - a vacation in itself
Every now and again, my wife and I, both avid travelers, feel the need to escape for a while. The problem is that we feel like getting away from the daily grind more often than time-off or money allows. A Year in Provence offers the perfect solution.

For a couple evenings in a row, we curl up on the couch or floor, open some red wine, put in the movie, and let escape to south france. It's fantastic.

The movie is funny and entertaining, but more than that, it is real. It makes you feel as though you could be the one with the house in Provence, getting into the little mishaps, making a big, entertaining deal about the smallest things. There are no epic adventures, it is simply a vacation. We could see anything that happens in the movie happening to anyone else, if only we were there.

The book is also excellent, but a little harder to enjoy at the same time as someone else.

Fun for some, but poor-quality DVD
I've been revisiting this wonderful mini-series on DVD, watching it on a hi-res screen, and note that the image-quality is really appalling. It looks like they took an old VHS tape, and strained it through a sieve. Which is probably pretty close to what actually happened, the "sieve" in this case being a really crude digital-compression system. Too bad, because it contains a lot of beautiful scenic photography, which has been turned to mush.

Is Something Missing?
I thoroughly enjoyed this series(VHS format) but the DVD version seems to be missing some scenes.
Has anyone else noticed this or is it my imagination?

Better Than the Book!
This 4-video set is one of those rare birds -- an adaptation that is better then the original book. Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence is good, but the screenplay made a few important changes that made all the difference.

The addition of a wife for Mayle is the main difference. While Mayle has a wife in the book, she fades so far into the background as to be virtually invisible. I see from the dedication in the book that her name is Jenny, but since the screenwriter had to create a wife out of whole cloth here, he gave her a new name as well -- Annie. The addition of Annie and the casting of Lindsay Crouse make all the difference.

Another difference was to subtract ex-spouses and grown children, which serves to streamline the story. Peter in the film is somewhat more short-tempered and loud than Peter in the book, but this makes a nice contrast with Annie. And who is going to make himself out to be a blowhard in his own book, after all? The rest of the story is much as Mayle wrote it.

This set has become one of our family favorites. We borrowed the public library's copies several times, then finally bought our own and watch it at least once a year. It's broken down into twelve 30-minute chapters, one for each month. You can watch it in half hour chunks or 90-minute doses, a whole season (and tape) at a time. The chapters stand alone, but are also threaded together to make a real story. In fact, the story comes together so neatly, that one suspects that although these episodes may really have happened, perhaps they happened over a period of several years, or in a different order. Still, some of the best non-fiction writers out there are novelists at heart.

The acting and the scenery in A Year in Provence are just great. The French characters are played by French actors and speak no English in the film. Since the Mayles are learning French, they are able to translate for us and it doesn't seem awkward.

There you have it: entertaining writing, good acting, gorgeous scenery, and a free French lesson thrown in.

Enjoyable but Uneven
I enjoyed this. I enjoyed Lindsay Duncan as Annie Mayle having seen her prior as the looney blond in "Under the Tuscan Sun" -- totally different woman here. Having done renovations recently, I also completely identified with the ongoing kitchen renovations and other things. I confess I've only partially finished the book after 10 years of owning it. I always get busy and it seems episodic and not terribly compelling to continue with. The DVD, on the other hand, I enjoyed, but felt it might have been slightly wackier in tone like the books. I don't know what's up with the baker story at the end but it's a complete ripoff of Marcel Pagnol's "The Baker's Wife." Maybe it seemed like a good idea on paper, but it left me searching for the remote to fast forward through these sections. As for Provence, this isn't picture postcard Provence like we're used to but real Provence, complete with telephone poles in frame. It reminded me a lot of California farmland. This is enjoyable but it's not stellar. In the end I'll keep memories of Lindsay Duncan, the beautiful house they chose, a few scattered moments here and there, and little else. But don't get me wrong. I liked it, I just wasn't captivated by it and maybe that's really in the writing and especially the direction which is a bit pedestrian considering the book is so almost universally loved and is of a different tone than this more even-keeled film version. The second disc, by the way, is excruciatingly bad when seen as a whole. Except for the petanque storyline, one finds himself turning on this series as extremely contrived and resents that yet again for the 100th time too many it seems the Mayles are called in to save the day for the French, as if they haven't been doing it on their own just fine for some time. The sense of superiority is annoying. Go home to England TV versions of Annie and Peter Mayle. Your fish out of water story has run out of water and leaves just a little too much fish. ... Read more

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Based on the book by Catherine Heath. the 1989 four-part British miniseries Behaving Badly is not to be confused with the Britcom, Men Behaving Badly. Judi Dench, as ever, commands the screen in her BAFTA-nominated performance as middle-aged Bridget Mayor, who, like Jill Clayburgh's character in An Unmarried Woman, is initially shattered, but gets a new lease on life after her husband of two decades (Ronald Pickup, Fortunes of War) announces that he intends to marry his mistress younger Rebecca (Frances Barber). After a somewhat dreary first hour, dutiful and obedient Bridget blossoms and shines as she declares that"with only myself to think about, and not much to lose, I've stopped caring about other people's good opinions." Declaring her conformist days are over, she shocks family and friends, first by moving back in with her ex and his new wife, and then in the flat her daughter, Trudy, shares with a close-knit group of young professionals. She further scandalizes one and all by falling in love with one of them, and considers accompanying him to America. "My mother has stopped being splendid," Trudy frets. Less compelling is Trudy's own romantic pursuit of a black pastor.

Behaving Badly deftly mixes melodrama and comedy. Gwen Watfordias costars as Bridget's former mother-in-law and champion, who torments Rebecca and makes Marie on Everybody Loves Raymond look like June Cleaver. In an early performance, Joely Richardson (Nip/Tuck) steals her scenes as a nerves-frayed, stressed-out schoolteacher. Behaving Badly anticipates the current so-called "chick lit" movement with this empowering personal odyssey that ends on an optimistically exhilarating high, as Bridget heals all family wounds, and "risks everything" to embark on her "grand adventure." --Donald Liebenson ... Read more

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British mystery fans will find a wry sense of humor combined with a good old-fashioned bloodbath in Death's Shadow. Badger's Drift is in many ways a typical small village: charming scenery, closely intertwined lives, and--whoops!--a headless corpse. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby is soon on the scene, teasing apart the intricate network of village relationships and grudges with an increasing sense of urgency as new corpses begin piling up at a gratifying rate. The mystery is a fun one, offsetting the gore with a light touch and a knowing wink that this is all in good fun. Barnaby, ably played by John Nettles, makes an excellent detective hero--firm in his resolve, a little too passionately dedicated to his job, and smart enough to crack the case without being so fast as to interfere with the body count. This witty, well-acted production is everything you could ask for in a mystery. --Ali Davis ... Read more

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Mystery author Caroline Graham is at it again with a new and tangled installment in the Midsomer Murders series. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (the gently irascible John Nettles) and the trusty sergeant Troy (ably played, as always, by Daniel Casey) are trying to keep the peace between the locals at Martyr Warren and the two clans of Travelers who have decided to settle in for a bit. Things, of course, turn deadly, with murder, theft, and spouse-swapping all on the menu. Graham's welcome undercurrent of humor runs through the carnage, this time in the form of Barnaby's frustratingly strict new diet. As always in this fine series, the performances are first-rate, the puzzle is an engaging one, and village life is depicted with all the affection and gentle teasing it deserves. Well worth watching. --Ali Davis ... Read more

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Strangler's Wood is a gruesomely enjoyable entry in the darkly witty Midsomer Murders series. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby is on the case again, this time in pursuit of a serial murderer who has apparently resurfaced after nearly a decade of quiet. The story is a thoroughly absorbing one, full of nasty crawling secrets that come out when Barnaby begins poking below the village's surface, and the solution is genuinely satisfying. As in other programs in the series, Strangler's Wood also pays realistic attention to the way Barnaby's job affects his home life, making his tenacity at pursuing a case exasperating without getting melodramatic. Fans of Daniel Casey's Sergeant Troy will be pleased to see him prominently featured in the episode as well. This is a terrific, stand-alone chapter in an excellent series. Watch it. --Ali Davis ... Read more

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Fans of Caroline Graham's young-but-game Sergeant Troy are in for a double treat with this entry in the Midsomer Murders series. At the behest of Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby's actress-daughter Cully, the two policemen spend this episode trailed by a Troy Doppelganger researching a part. And we're not even to the mystery yet, which is a surprisingly and enjoyably old-fashioned one: A ho-hum case of vandalism in a local museum leads to rumors of a haunting and a very real murder. Beyond the Grave has a much less weighty feel than some of the other episodes in this series, but there is much to recommend it, including the exasperated but loyal relationship between Troy and Barnaby and a deft performance by Prunella Scales as a village psychic. --Ali Davis ... Read more