To not merrily give away my Christmas lunch to a German family I've never even met?

[HarrietKettleWasHere]

Ok not me but Jo March.

I'n watching the travesty BBC adaption of Little Women.

The mum comes home and makes them feel awful just as they are about to tuck in to all the lovely food, because of the poor immigrant family, who are, by all accounts, having a really horrible time. Even though Marmee has already given them all her firewood. And they skip out the door so jolly, with all their bacon, sausages and maple syrup, and cream that they get only at Christmas to bestow upon the family. Even selfish Amy!

I was just wondering if I'd have been quite so joyful about doing that at a similar age

Beth then gets scarlet fever from the baby, which goes to show no good deed goes unpunished.

It looks like it'll be a clementine for dinner, 1 segment apiece, but luckily the rich family from down the road then take pity on them and send a lovely ham.

This is lighthearted by the way. It can't be serious really because the adaption is quite awful.

I don't know is where they filmed it but it can't be Massachusetts as I keep hearing a Great Tit call and they don't have those there pedantic

Also Amy is supposed to be 12 and she looks 27.

What other classics has television managed to ruin for you with their adaptions?

Ok it was breakfast but I gathered that was to be the 'main event' until they gave it all away, as they were visibly relieved when the 'naice ham' saved the day.

YABU because it was their Christmas breakfast .

It’s donkeys years since I read the books so can’t remember any details to annoy me. It’s perfect post Christmas slush.

They give up their Christmas breakfast, not lunch - they have a nice lunch later. I really like this adaptation - they don't all seem too goody-goody, though I agree they seem too similar in age.

No, the lunch they had later was like a bloody banquet. The turkey was on steroids I'm sure.

And it was all done by the cook/housekeeper.

Insufferable goodness was the expectation though, at least in books.

I thought Amy deserved anything she got for burning Jo's manuscript. Why should Jo forgive her just because she's a younger sister.

I'm rather enjoying this and am looking forward to the final episode later today. I like the girls and their acting, although Amy's hair does not look right -- are dark roots showing through or is it just me.

I had to study this book as part of my degree. A whole book of bland, I cared less and less about each March child the more I read . Although I did enjoy writing a character assassination of Pa March in an essay, much to my tutor's dismay (it was her favourite book of the course!).

Yes I remember Marmee saying something like giving up their breakfast and making up for it later. Best version is the 1949 one though.

Amy definitely has a bad dye job.

livingdownsouth that's really interesting, what was the dirt on Pa March?!

No their enormous sacrifice was in fact to have to wait 5 hours for a large lunch (cooked by good ol' Hannah who doesn't even get Christmas Day off). Come on, they are gentlewomen, they can't actually go hungry.

re Age - wasn't the younger sister in the original Railway Children an improbably age in real life? - yes, Sally Thomsett, a 20-year-old playing 11-year-old Phyllis.

Pickled limes - wouldn't these be just what they say - limes which have been pickled? As in Lime Pickle (which tastes so good in a banana toastie)

I'm glad Amy is older actually. It makes Laurie's turn of events seem a little less ewwww.

I always loved the name Laurie because of Little Women.

My family are form Little Women neck of the woods and actually the Lansbury and Gambon accents are pretty good for ye olde poshe New Englanders.

The 'adult' actors are all very very good so far.

I thought Kirsten Dunst played a lovely Amy.

I was just looking up the ages of the actresses.

The actress who plays Jo is 19, (and is the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke apparently), and in the book she's 15.

The actress playing Beth is 25, who is meant to be 13 in the book.

The actress playing Meg is really 26, but meant to be 16 in the book.

And the actress playing Amy is 20, meant to be the youngest sister at just 12 years old.

She looks so like her parents.

Double take.

25!!!!!?????????????????

I don't think Laurie turns to Amy until she's 17 or 18 so not really very eww by the standards of the time.

They are going into Good Wives plot tonight so Amy does need to be older. Guess they didn't want to use two actresses.

Yes but it is ewwwwww because he first sees her when she is a young child. Ewwwwww

Agree with all negative pp comments. Sanctimonious, boring twits, the lot of them.

Could I add that if anyone burned my novel, I would let them drown!

To get back to your OP , ITV did an adaptation of Oliver Twist maybe 8 years ago. Tom Hardy was Sikes, which I am sure pleased many (although odd casting I thought) and they had him hang himself in the sewers. WTAF??

My fave little women adaptation has a blonde Elizabeth Taylor as Amy. Every girl loves Jo doesn't she? I never quite understood why she turned down Laurie.

Ah, Gunpowder, cousin Helen, and her poem about the School of Pain and how it readied one for heaven [sigh] I re-read the book the other day and remembered why I strongly advised my brother not to promote quite as many Victorian children's novels to my nieces as I had. Much as I loved them all. I really loved Eight Cousins which was unusual IMO in that it was the boy whose 'eyes gave out' from reading too much not the girl, though immediately Rose popped up ready to marry him now that he couldn't see her bits, or something.

Harriet no dirt really, I was more clutching at straws trying to beat some kind of life into that story! I remember I compared his emotional distance unfavourably with other characters. I was so relieved to move past that part of the course.

Poverty stricken yet still with a servant - these are what Jilly Cooper would call Distressed Gentlefolk, i.e. not proper poor people but rich people who have fallen on hard times, so have it much worse because they have houses and servants to maintain and aren't used to having to

It's the same in The Railway Children - their idea of poverty is one servant and having to choose between bread and butter or bread and jam. See also: Ballet Shoes. (At least in that Nana is not taking a salary so there is a semblance of credibility to it).

I've only seen a bit of this adaptation but wasn't impressed that Amy appears to be quite old at the start, Jo looks distractingly like Uma Thurman (unsurprisingly given she is Uma's daughter) and Marmee hasn't made a forthright speech about corsetry to John Brooke as Susan Sarandon did so memorably in the film.