< Back

by Alexandra Heilbron, Toronto, Ontario

Source: The Avonlea Traditions Chronicle, Issue No. 22, Winter 1997/8

The new, long-awaited series Emily of New Moon has finally come to Canadian television. Long-awaited, because the show began filming in 1996, a second season was filmed in 1997 and the show made its appearance on television in 1998. The wait added to the allure; building up people's expectations and desire for a new series based on LMM's works after the incredible success of Road to Avonlea.

Emily of New Moon is based on LMM's Emily trilogy of books-rather loosely based. Much darker than the books, it doesn't follow occurrences from the books terribly faithfully. In fact, only two tiny bits of the premiere episode came from the books.

The show is interesting-a dark look at childhood at the turn of the last century. The main character, Emily Starr is intriguing. Strong and intensely likeable, she carries the show. The producers have found a gem in Martha MacIsaac, the native P.E. Islander who plays the key role of Emily.

Although her inexperience shows at times, she has the spunk and energy needed to play the wild, indomitable Emily. She also looks perfect for the part, an attractive little girl with flashing dark eyes, pale complexion and unruly dark brown hair.

Michael Moriarty is an interesting choice as Emily's father, Douglas Starr. This fine American actor who was so wonderful in Law and Order just didn't seem to have the warmth necessary to generate much sympathy for his ill health and the sudden accident leading to his premature death. Emily obviously loves him; but the audience doesn't exactly know why, or share any of her grief, which is so necessary to the plot. To understand the bleakness of what Emily's future with stern relatives will be, we need to fully feel the warmth, comfort and protective innocence she felt with her father in their cosy little farmhouse.

Much of the debut episode showed us Emily's life before the book begins. Shortly after her mother's death, four-year-old Emily is enticed by the ghost of her mother out of the safety of her home one dark, windy night and into the cemetery, crying that her mother needs her to comfort her. If the ghost of her mother were having a problem getting comfortable with the idea of being dead, why wouldn't she instead appear to her husband? Why entice her tiny child outside and into possible danger in the dead of night? This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a loving mother would do to her an infant daughter.

Usually parental ghosts in stories come back to comfort their children or to keep them out of harm's way, not to put them in danger. So, even at the beginning of the story, Emily does not have a warm, safe place to come from, because neither her mother nor her father provide that for her. Her transition from the parental home to (by the end of the episode) a strange home with odd relatives isn't quite the contrast that LMM provided in the book.

Susan Clark creates an Aunt Elizabeth who is just as frightening and intimidating as in the book. Maybe even more so. Apparently, Clark wanted very much to play Aunt Elizabeth and campaigned successfully for the role. Unfortunately, she was unavailable for filming of the second season due to family reasons. Her character's absence will be explained away as lost at sea, during which time another character will take her place, leaving the door open for Clark to return if the series is renewed for a third season. Whether this plot contrivance will sit well with viewers is questionable.

Veteran Canadian actor Sheila McCarthy plays Aunt Laura, Elizabeth's sensitive and kind but extremely timid and weak younger sister. Stephen McHattie rounds out the trio of New Moon relatives as the strange and gruff but wonderfully warm and kind-hearted Cousin Jimmy. McHattie brings a quiet depth to his role, but also a quirky unpredictableness, compelling viewers to watch him every moment he appears on screen.

Perhaps now that the first introduction to Emily has been made, the series will somehow have more to do with the books, but it appears doubtful. According to the episode synopses provided by the producers, within the first season, (and these are all plots not found in the Emily books) Emily helps a pregnant, homeless girl deliver her child and then decides to adopt the baby herself; comforts a boy she sees crying at a public hanging; gets caught in an animal trap; and learns how to tell stories without words from a mime named Pierrot.

Sounds interesting, right? But why not also use some of what LMM wrote for the series? She was quite capable of writing interesting plots and stories (and of course, certainly did so within the Emily trilogy) and if the producers/writers of the series were not of that opinion, why did they base it on her books?

In fact, why advertise the show as being based on LMM's books when really, the LMM content is negligible? If they'd called the series something other than Emily of New Moon and given the characters different names, it's unlikely anyone would have suspected that LMM had anything to do with this series at all.

That's not to say the series is "bad". It just would have been better if even some of LMM's basic plot and/or stories from the book had been followed. This series has none of that, in fact, it is far more reminiscent of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë than anything by LMM. It's interesting that the producers wanted to honour LMM's writing by basing a series on her books, but then not allowing any of her writing to be used, instead bestowing that honour on television writers.

And that's a shame, because Emily of New Moon is a book that would have easily translated to screen. The character of Emily is a wonderful little headstrong spitfire, trying to be good but not always succeeding and she manages to make her way through her many sorrows and adventures with a decidedly positive attitude.

Many articles written by various television reviewers about this series seem to assume that LMM wrote the Emily books during a darker period of her life. This is a complete misstatement; LMM didn't write dark books-she was opposed to showing the darker side of life in fictional stories and kept all of her books relatively upbeat.

However, despite the difference in tone to the books and almost complete non-LMM content, Emily of New Moon is an intriguing show and the gothic aspect contained within is enticing. Whether it will be as big a hit as Road to Avonlea remains to be seen.

The 7:00 p.m. time slot belonged to Wind At My Back after Avonlea's cancellation, but the show didn't take off in the same way because, being about children in the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was more downbeat than Avonlea. It has a modest following, but not anything close to the massive audience that tuned in for Road to Avonlea each week.

Whether this same fate will befall Emily has yet to be decided. Hopefully not, because it's a show that has a lot going for it, but the dark, sad and at times frightening tone may well lead viewers (particularly those with very young children) who were expecting another Road to Avonlea to switch back over to the upbeat and often hilarious Due South, which has been consistently winning hands down in the 7:00 p.m. Sunday time slot against Wind At My Back.

If it does succeed, much of the credit will belong to the casting of Martha MacIsaac in the title role. She has the self-assuredness combined with vulnerability needed to win the viewer's empathy, and with the experience gained from her role in Emily of New Moon, MacIsaac could very well go on to become a major star in Canada.

< Back