The Depths of Despair

Anne of Green Gables: Netflix’s Bleak Adaptation Gets It All So Terribly Wrong

Anne with an E has very little for long-time lovers of Green Gables.
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Courtesy of Netflix

This Friday, Netflix premiered the latest version of the much-adapted story of Anne Shirley—the scrappy, smart, red-headed orphan from Prince Edward Island. And though this 2017 production—titled, cutely, Anne with an E—didn’t originate with Netflix (it’s a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation joint), the first season of Anne’s adventures fits in neatly with one of the streaming service’s favorite tactics: nostalgia.

While Anne has been a bona fide cultural icon for over a century—ever since Canadian author L.M. Montgomery first debuted her in 1908—she holds a special place in the hearts of children of the 80s and 90s who grew up on a wildly popular two-part CBC miniseries, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea—directed by Kevin Sullivan and starring Megan Follows. You don’t need Anne-levels of imagination to see that Netflix hoped the brand recognition that made Fuller House such a hit would work again for Green Gables.

But those hoping the series recaptures the glow of either the original Montgomery books or the 1980s adaptation are in for a rude awakening. From the start, Anne with an E (called, simply, Anne in Canada) has promised a gritty, dark reboot of the Prince Edward Island tale. Emmy-winning Anne writer and producer Moira Walley-Beckett—who knows something about darkness, thanks to her work on four seasons of Breaking Bad—strains to break away from the simple, homespun charm of earlier versions. Several recent ambitious adaptations, like Fargo, Hannibal, and The Leftovers, have found great success in ditching the content of their source material and concentrating instead on matching its tone. But Walley-Beckett takes a different route: she explores classic Anne escapades, but makes them feel moody and bleak.

This is not the first adaptation to do Anne a disservice. A misbegotten third installment of the Follows/Sullivan Anne stories failed to land with fans in 2000, and another recent Anne adaptation—a series of TV movies that first premiered in 2016—woefully miscast the shy and largely silent Matthew Cuthbert with a loquacious Martin Sheen.

Still, none of the many, many other Anne adaptations stray so disastrously far from the spirit of Montgomery’s original books—and the result is a gloomy series with grim, life-or-death stakes draped over the bones of something beloved, warm-hearted, and familiar. The milestones are still there—currant wine, broken slates, puffed sleeves—but seen through a glass darkly. Brave as the concept may be, it falls flat—and feels particularly unwelcome in an already grim 2017. For more specifics on what Anne with an E gets so terribly wrong, read past the spoiler warning (for a hundred-year-old story) below.

The first (as in, within the first minutes of the first episode) radical departure Anne with an E takes is to rather graphically depict—via chilly flashbacks—the years of abuse Anne sustained before she came to live with the Cuthberts. This is, admittedly, the most logical leap Walley-Beckett’s version takes: Anne’s life was bleak and lonely before she came to Green Gables. In the original book, L.M. Montgomery laid it out ever-so-delicately:

“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they meant to be—I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re not quite—always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It’s very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think? But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.”

It’s no wonder that Anne with an E was inclined to make that subtext a bit more explicit. But while Anne likely did suffer some torment during her tenure with the Hammond family, Anne with an E ramps up the trauma by having Mr. Hammond die of a heart attack brought about by beating the tar out of poor Anne.

The sad result of this first misstep is that the version of Anne we meet at the start of the series— played by Amybeth McNulty—isn’t quite the sunny, optimistic girl who has won over generations of readers. She retains some of Anne’s eccentricities—a fierce imagination and intricate fantasy life, as well as a fondness for high-flown language—but those tics, in this context, come off as mildly deranged. This is an Anne with PTSD. And not for the last time in the series, Anne with an E struggles to make this new version of the red-head fit with the hallmark scenes of the story. It makes very little sense for Anne to pop off after Rachel Lynde’s comparatively mild insults and scream, “You’ve hurt my feelings more than they’ve ever been hurt before” when she’s come from a long history of vicious abuse, at the hands of both her foster parents and the other girls at the orphan asylum.

Anne with an E also matches the extremes of Anne’s backstory with exaggerated, life-or-death stakes in the present day. Anne of Green Gables endures as a cozy story that reveals the resiliency of the human spirit through small-scale, domestic victories and setbacks, as well as the mundane, everyday tragedies of human life. But in its second episode, Anne with an E transforms into a turn-of-the-century version of Taken with humble farmer Matthew Cuthbert (R.H. Thomson) frantically racing against time to get Anne back to Green Gables. (In no other version of the story do they let her go away in the first place.) His panic, it seems, is warranted, because Anne is greeted at the train station in this version by a . . . child molester? Kidnapper? In any case, he’s a grim, adult menace that threatens to draw Anne back into a world of abuse.

Once back at Green Gables, this Anne finds the world as unfriendly as ever. Unlike the Anne of the books—who is immediately “real popular” with her classmates—this girl gets bullied, hard, by mean girls and cartoonishly villainous boys, chiefly an alt-right meninist-in-training version of Billy Andrews (Christian Martyn).

The ham-fisted misogyny from this kid is echoed elsewhere in a series that seems to think that in order for Anne to be a feminist figure, she has to butt up against a straw-man-filled patriarchy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Episode 4, when Marilla (Geraldine James) is told by the town’s minister not to worry about Anne going back to school. “This problem is easily solved,” he lectures. “If the girl doesn’t want to go to school, she shouldn’t go. She should stay home and learn proper housekeeping until she marries. And then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone I shall make a helper for him.’ There’s no need for her to bother with an education. Every young woman should learn how to be a good wife.”

This cruel, pervasive attitude ignores the fact that, historically, Anne has been surrounded by other educated women—like her beloved teacher, Miss Stacy, or the girls who go with her to college. Anne Shirley is not the first girl on the planet to crack a book. These misogynist sentiments not only do the good men of Avonlea a disservice (Anne considers the kindly Reverend Allan in the book a “kindred spirit”) but construct an unnecessary obstacle to Anne’s success. Anne with an E seems to think Anne’s triumphs are only noteworthy if she’s continually told she can’t succeed, when in fact her unfettered brilliance needs no such clumsy opposition. It also seems to think that Anne needs a radical feminist makeover when, in fact, the story of her success was feminist in its own right. Anne with an E is overly fond of its many winking forward-looking moments (“Scientists predict greenhouse effect!” an old-timey newsie cries out, “you’re ahead by a century!” the theme song intones), and none land with as much of a thud as Marilla Cuthbert attending a feminist book club.

As with everything else in this series, Anne’s talents are also exaggerated. Her exceptionalism extends beyond being good in school or saving Minnie May Barry (a believable skill, given Anne’s background in childcare). Now she’s also the only person in Avonlea smart enough to save a home from fire. Yes: little Anne shows up an entire town of men (no strangers to fire, I’m sure), rushing headlong into a blazing house. Everyone in Avonlea must be extra useless and narrow-minded, it seems, in order for Anne to look more impressive.

But these overreaches of Anne’s gifts and her struggles are nothing compared to the strange overhauls of character Anne with an E lays forth. In the books, when Anne first meets Gilbert Blythe, he is cheeky, yes. But this version of Gilbert (played by Lucas Jade Zumann, who was so endearingly earnest in 2016’s 20th Century Women) is a smug-yet-woke little lothario.

Not even a slate cracked across his head is enough to wipe the smirk off his face.

The beauty of Gilbert Blythe in his many other iterations is how meeting Anne Shirley completely transforms him. Her resistance to his charms and the competition she gives him at school shakes him out of his complacent, golden boy existence. But Anne with an E isn’t at home with something that subtle. This series thrives on non-stop tragedy. And so Gilbert, like Anne, becomes an orphan—a very early exit for his father, John Blythe, who lives to see his grandkids in the books. This adaptive change paves the way for Anne and Gilbert to bond over their orphan status. . .

. . . but it also overshadows that theirs is a rare turn-of-the-century literary romance that is, above all else, based on the mutual attraction of two ambitious, top-notch brains.

But the biggest mistake Anne with an E makes is in its re-interpretation of Matthew Cuthbert. The simple, soft-hearted, painfully shy farmer is given an elaborate new backstory, which involves the painful childhood death of a show-invented brother (more tragedy for everyone!) and a budding, rekindled romance with an old schoolmate named Jeannie (Brenda Bazinet). Yes: in this version, Matthew Cuthbert—who should find the platonic love of his life in his little girl, Anne—gets a love interest.

Worse yet, when his health fails and the Green Gables farm is in jeopardy, this version of Matthew Cuthbert tries to take his own life.

It’s inconceivable to imagine a world in which Matthew Cuthbert would commit suicide, abandoning Anne and Marilla. Such a pivot also makes a mockery of Matthew Cuthbert’s demise in the books, a seminal moment that has shaken a century of readers. His death—from a heart attack—is a lesson to Anne and readers that sadness can come at any time, in the most low-key and everyday ways. “Matthew who had walked with her last evening at sunset,” Anne reflects in the book, “was now lying in the dim room below with that awful peace on his brow.”

This show version of Matthew, though, will live at least until Season 2. (As well he should! Matthew is with Anne for many years before his heart attack.) He’ll be on hand to help resolve Anne with an E’s menacing cliffhanger, which sees two violent grifters insinuate their way into lodging with the Cuthberts. It’s an ominous ending worthy of the world of Breaking Bad—but wholly unwelcome on Green Gables farm.