helenistic, Author at Helen McCrory

Video: In a Land of Plenty

On January 10, 2001May 7, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Episodes 1 – 10

by Helenistic | You Tube /Wikipedia | August 5, 2018

In A Land Of Plenty is a 10-episode British television drama serial produced by Sterling Pictures and Talkback for BBC Two in the United Kingdom. Adapted for television by Kevin Hood and Neil Biswas from the novel by Tim Pears., it was first broadcast in the United Kingdom starting on January 10, 2001 and describes a sprawling family saga taking place from the 1950s to the 1990s in England. Through the lives, deaths, tragedies and loves of the Freeman family, the series charts how Britain was shaped after World War II. It was subsequently broadcast in the USA on BBC America. The show was co-financed between WGBH-TV and the BBC and was produced by Michael Riley and John Chapman. Executive Producers were Peter Fincham and Tessa Ross. The soundtrack was written by composer and musician Jocelyn Pook.

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North Square Video

Video: North Square

On October 18, 2000May 7, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Episodes 1-10

by Helenistic | You Tube / Wikipedia | October 18, 2000

North Square is a British television drama series written and created by Peter Moffat, and broadcast by Channel 4 from 18 October to 20 December 2000. Starring an ensemble cast, including Phil Davis, Rupert Penry-Jones, Helen McCrory and Kevin McKidd, the series is set around the practice of a barristers’ chambers in Leeds. The series was filmed in and around the real life Park Square, Leeds. This is the area in the city where the majority of barristers’ chambers are concentrated. The full series was released on DVD for the first time by Acorn Media UK in 2012. Continue reading Video: North Square

Anna Karenina Trailer Video

VIDEO: Anna Karenina Official Trailer and All Episodes

On May 9, 2000May 16, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Tolstoy’s Masterpiece comes to life

Helenistic | You Tube | May 9, 2000

Anna Karenina is the young wife of an older husband. She has an affair with the handsome Count Vronsky. By following her desires, Anna complicates her life.

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Anna Karenina Print Media

All About Anna

On May 8, 2000April 25, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory asks why the 19th century character still appeals to 21st century women

by Helen McCrory | The Guardian | May 8, 2000

How should a woman live her life? Survive to the age of 70, fearfully, being as everyone else instructs her to be? Or play the heroine, passionately, in the knowledge that trying and failing need not equal defeat?

This is the timeless conundrum Tolstoy’s vivid heroine, Anna Karenina, took on, long before it became fashionable to discuss the conflict of desire and expectation in women’s lives. She was an original of her era, but what are the resonances of Anna’s story for the modern woman?

Born into the wealthy, decadent upper class of 19th-century St Petersburg, Anna confronts the hypocrisy of the day when she breaks free of an empty marriage after falling in love with army officer Vronsky. She scandalises her contemporaries when she chooses to live with him as his mistress, after her husband refuses her a divorce. But her passion for her lover is tempered by the pain of leaving her son and the disapproval heaped on her by the Russian aristocracy. Spiralling into depression and opium addiction, she starts to doubt Vronsky. A bout of morbid jealousy tips her over the edge and she throws herself under a train.

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Anna Karenina Reviews

Anna Karenina Review: The Love Train

On May 7, 2000April 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

What on earth would Tolstoy have thought? Channel 4 have upped the raunch factor in Anna Karenina, his heavyweight morality tale. But it’s a good move, reckons Mark Lawson

Mark Lawson | May 7, 2000 | The Guardian

Tolstoy can’t have known, when writing a novel back in the 1870s, that trains rushing into tunnels would become a cinematic euphemism for sex. But his book about a Moscow political wife’s passion for a soldier – in which the speed of trains is a metaphor for the dangers and consequences of sexual passion – has consistently attracted film-makers. David Selznick cast Garbo in 1935, while Alexander Korda chose Vivien Leigh for the role in 1947. More recently, the writer-director Bernard Rose made a movie version with Sophie Marceau. Now Helen McCrory stars in a new four-part TV adaptation of Anna Karenina (Tuesday, 9pm, Channel 4).

Penelope Fitzgerald – a fine novelist who died last week – once expressed the hope that television would soon run out of great novels to adapt, and return literature to readers. But, although there are the inevitable losses – authorial tone and psychological complexity – Anna Karenina is, at the basic but crucial level of plot, the perfect book for TV.

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