There's been a short CiB hiatus while I attended an important family event, but now we are back in business with very important TV-watching
The Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are a phenomenon: always in print, beloved by generations of young people. Then came a legendary TV series in the 1970s and the 1980s: 10 years, hundreds of episodes, forever being re-discovered - most recently during the pandemic, when they were massively popular.
So Netflix decided to make a new version: an 8-episode series
which has just landed, with a further series already commissioned.
I watched all the new programmes, reread some of the books, and
looked at some of the old versions, and wrote an article for the i paper with my
valuable, weighty perceptions. There were all kinds of interesting aspects: the Native Americans gaining Main Character Energy, the un-tradwifing of Ma, Michael Landon's hair in the original... and the key question of Laura's hat.
You can read it here:
Netflix's
moralising updates to Little House on the Prairie just don't work
(as
ever, I didn’t write the headline, and it doesn’t exactly reflect the content)
If you
don’t subscribe, you may be able to reach it with this link
This sounds even worse than the original TV show. I remember watching one episode with my mother in which Laura slapped Nellie Oleson. We looked at each other in disgust and my mother turned off the TV, never to watch it again. There are some good clothes in Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years - those (and The Long Winter) were the ones I reread most frequently.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall participating in a survey for HarperCollins last year about new packaging for the series to coincide with the Netflix release. I hope they keep the beloved Garth Williams covers and art. However, if children start reading the books again, it will be a good thing. Because of the portrayal of Native Americans, a lot of librarians stopped promoting the books in recent years.
Wouldn't that rule out most TV programmes ššš? The people I consulted (teenage watchers back in the day) loved the back and forth with Nellie.
DeleteAre the books out of copyright now, will there be lots of different editions of them?
Got it. They told me, “you have access to this article thanks to someone you know.” That’s so nice.
ReplyDeleteGood! don't know how many people I'm allowed to know ššš
DeleteThanks for allowing access, Moira. This is such a thoughtful, interesting review of the reboot. You make some well-taken points about character depth and the series being a bit moralistic. But it's good to know that there are some things to really like about the series, too. I wonder now what the actors in the original series think about it...
ReplyDelete