It seems that every few years or so, someone tries to revive this classic. Remember the CW’s “gritty” dystopian adaptation that thankfully never made it to air? You know, the one where Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy were half sisters roaming the streets of a ravaged Philadelphia trying to unravel some sort of mystery? Remember when Amy Pascal was going to produce a version for Sony Pictures? Those were bad times. This time sounds nothing like that; in fact it sounds quite good.
Deadline reports that the adaptation is a three part miniseries produced by PBS Masterpiece and the BBC, written by Call the Midwife’s Helen Thomas and produced by the same company responsible for Wolf Hall, the 2015 miniseries adaptation of Hillary Mantel’s book. I tried my hardest to make it through both the book and the miniseries and could not do it, but that says more about me than anything else. Wolf Hall was supposed to be quite good! Call the Midwife is excellent. Nowhere did I see any mention of inserting feminism or an empowerment narrative or something about the election, so I think we’re in the clear here.
Will this be better than the 1994 movie featuring Claire Danes’ cryface and Kirsten Dunst? Will it surpass the Technicolor glory of 1949’s faithful retelling? Is there anything that will ever surpass those blonde sausage curls Elizabeth Taylor wore as Amy? No! Probably not. But everyone loves Little Women, so it’s fine. As long as this adaptation doesn’t pull any funny business we should be in good shape.
