The Ottawa Citizen - February 26, 2000

"Anne, again: Even Megan Follows is unsure about this miniseries, which has Anne becoming a secret agent"
Tony Atherton

In 1986, when Sullivan Entertainment was still simply Sullivan Films, a fledgling production company with just one full-length film under its belt, a letter arrived at the company's modest Toronto digs.

A Dallas woman expressed heartfelt thanks to the producers for giving her the opportunity to share a flood of emotions with a friend who was dying of leukemia. The woman had videotaped Sullivan's film when it aired on PBS and brought it to her friend in the hospital. Together, they had bathed in its burnished nostalgia, and had been swept away by its simple but superbly realized narrative.

The film was Anne of Green Gables, an evocative four-hour CBC miniseries based on the novel by Prince Edward Island author Lucy Maud Montgomery. With Megan Follows as the irrepressible orphan Anne and Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth as the aging couple who take her in against their better judgment, the miniseries remains the highest-rated Canadian drama of all time. It drew an average five million viewers in its initial broadcast in December 1985, and has since become Canada's most successful film export.

It was followed by a wildly popular sequel in 1987 and a hit spinoff television series, Road to Avonlea.

But even as the audience for Avonlea grew, people wanted more Anne.

"I thought I did complete the story," says Kevin Sullivan, who with his wife Trudy Grant founded Sullivan Films. "But people seemed to think not. They all felt that we had left Anne and Gilbert hanging on this bridge: Did they get married or didn't they get married? Well, to me, it seemed perfectly obvious that they were going to get married, but to a lot of other people it wasn't."

Sullivan resisted the pleadings of broadcasters for a decade. But Anne is finally returning. A two-part series -- Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story -- airs on CBC next Sunday night, March 5, and Monday, March 6. Both begin at 8 p.m.

Budgeted at $12 million, this series cost more than three times the original Anne. Most of the original cast is back, including Follows as Anne, Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe, Schuyler Grant as Diana Barry and Patricia Hamilton as the town busybody Rachel Lynde. (Dewhurst died while Road to Avonlea was still in production).

Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story continues no story that any Montgomery aficionado would remember -- or maybe even comprehend. Instead of Anne of the Island or Anne of Avonlea, we get Anne of the Big Apple, Anne of Trench Warfare, and Anne Shirley: Secret Agent.

"My biggest problem was that, after doing these other two miniseries, I could not do a story where Anne and Gilbert just got married and had a family," says Sullivan. "There was no drama in that, yet that's what happened in the (subsequent books) that Montgomery had written. If you read them, they're sweet and homespun ... but there really wasn't a story."

It's a difficult problem and one that worries the series' star, Megan Follows, who has avoided seeing the finished version because she fears it is flawed.

"Sometimes I felt like we really kind of hit the mark and sometimes I don't know," Follows, now 29, said in an interview from San Diego.

The central dramatic element of the new miniseries is the First World War, which a twentysomething Anne experiences first hand. Anne's melodramatic exploits in no man's land would have been impossible for Montgomery to contrive even if she had wanted to. Montgomery's Anne came to Avonlea as an 11-year-old in the 1880s; she was the mother of grown children by the time of the war.

As it happens, however, Sullivan had set his original miniseries just after the turn of the century. The change of period was largely a design decision; he wanted his characters dressed in eye-catching Edwardian wardrobe, not dour Victorian garb. Because of this initial time shift, Sullivan could easily get away with setting his new story in the war years, and create a miniseries that essentially shatters the bucolic innocence that has been central to the success of the first two Anne movies.

"This is a way of putting closure on the world (of Avonlea)," says Sullivan. "It demonstrates to people ... that the world significantly changed with the First World War, that it was impossible to go back to old ways of thinking."

Most of the first half of Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story is faithful to the novels and the original miniseries. Anne, who's been teaching in New Brunswick, returns to P.E.I. for the first time since Marilla's death. Diana is still her bosom friend, but is struggling to maintain the illusion of a happy marriage.

It's been seven years since Anne and Gilbert pledged their troth, and they are still engaged. Gilbert, a promising surgeon, has accepted a staff position at a New York City hospital, and he wants Anne to move there too, arguing that she'll be close to major publishing houses as she pursues her writing career. Marriage plans are put on hold.

Anne goes to New York, lands a job as a junior editor at a publishing firm, and gets herself into familiar kinds of scrapes by rushing headlong into things, and presuming too much.

She finds a mentor in the rough and ready Jack Garrison, a dashing adventure writer who wishes he had Anne's lyric ability.

When Anne and Gilbert return to Avonlea, Gilbert finds he can't ignore the war drums that were only a distant echo in the U.S. He signs up and, after a quick wedding ceremony, is shipped off.

When word comes that both Gilbert and Diana's husband, Fred, are missing in action, Anne hops the next boat to France, intent on volunteering as a Red Cross messenger.

Once in France, the miniseries plot becomes overwrought and contrived, as an anguished Anne searches the ruined landscape for some sign of Gilbert. The drama is driven by strained coincidences which, among other things, put Anne back in touch with Garrison, now a war correspondent with a French woman and their baby in tow.

Next thing you know, Anne is setting up a temporary residence in London as she cares for a war invalid and a baby. She finds work on a British newspaper, a job that puts her in the thick of international intrigue. Returning to France in disguise, she uses MacGyver-like ingenuity to effect an escape from French authorities who thinks she's a spy. There is, of course, a happily-ever-after someplace in this hectic story, but it's a long time coming.

More disconcerting for Anne fans than her sensational battlefield escapades is the accompanying change in tone for the second half of the miniseries. There is little warmth and no humour.

Sullivan talks about the "subconscious Freudian subtext," of the new Anne (a clear indication that we're no longer in Montgomery territory). He suggests that Anne, an insecure, overcompensating orphan, had some issues to work through, and that the war provides the crucible for her self-awareness.

"By putting her in an environment that was completely out of control, where she didn't understand how the pieces fit together, or what her life meant in terms of the people she cared about, it provided an important transition for her so that she could learn that happiness lies within," says Sullivan.

Such ambitious intentions might have worked better if the plot development was not only more lurid than previous Anne miniseries, but also more sophisticated.

"That was one of the big challenges in performing in the film," says Follows. "(Coincidence) is something that Mr. Sullivan seems really wedded to. It's been my experience that it's part of his storytelling. He is master of that ship, and what he wants, he gets ultimately. The rest of us do our best to make sense as best as we can."

Follows says she agreed to return to do the film because she was initially excited by a story that gave Anne greater scope.

However, she says, "bringing it to fruition was another thing. It was a lot of hard work, an incredible challenge and ... I had probably my own feelings about who I thought (Anne) was. That was sort of indulged up to a point, and then ultimately, when you work with Mr. Sullivan, it really is how he sees it and what he wants."

Sullivan says he understands Follows' misgivings.

"Megan is a perfectionist. In this project, the scale of it was so much larger than the other (miniseries). She maybe wasn't as influential on it.

"I kept saying to her along the way if you feel like the world is out of control, that's the way Anne feels. If you don't feel all these pieces integrate together, neither does your character."

Sullivan does not apologize for veering from Montgomery's version of Anne's story, because, he says, he stays true to Anne's character.

"She's a very strong character. ... All you have to do is put Anne in any situation and, if you know the fundamentals of her character well enough, the character comes to life and acts in a certain way."

If you're doing a story about Anne in the First World War, there are only two options for a dramatist, he says: "Either Anne stays at home or she's right into the thick of it."

And given Anne's temperament, says Sullivan, the latter is more likely. "You can't underplay her; it isn't her personality."

Source: Ottawa Citizen