IN A NUTSHELL: Wonderful cast of talented actors, terrific cinematography. Terrible scriptwriting to the point where at times it's nearly unwatchable.
It would take far too long and too many words to detail what's wrong with this production, and you don't want the spoilers anyway. So I'll give you the mile-high viewpoint, and if you watch, see if you agree.
Above all, this is yet another depiction of the 19th and 20th Century chock-full of spurious 21st Century mores. As if people THEN thought the same way people do NOW. That ruins the historicity of it for me.
The writers are far too intent on preaching modernist socio-political thought to give you an accurate depiction of life in rural England in the 1910s, 20s and 30s.
In every instance of moral dilemma - which after all is what drama is inevitably about - what someone WANTS is always given precedence over what they OUGHT to do from a traditional ethical and moral perspective. In fact, "what one ought to do" is uniformly presented as stunted or even evil. No, you shouldn't honor your marriage vows if you FEEL like doing something else. No, you shouldn't hold fast to your religious convictions, because religion is for nutters. Feel like having sex on the spur of the moment? Go for it; it's what you WANT to do (outmoded ideas of moral fidelity are barbaric anyway).
I watched this because the actors in the drama manage to rise above bad writing and horribly inaccurate social history. The scenes of rural life are breathtaking.
But the story is not. It's maudlin, prissy and factually inaccurate.
