The Globe and Mail - December 5, 1987

"Fine performances help redeem an otherwise superficial production; Slick Anne sequel takes no chances with success"
John Haslett Cuff

EXCEPT FOR A FEW very fine performances, Anne of Green Gables - The Sequel (CBC, Sunday at 7:30 p.m.) seems about as genuine as a waterfall in a shopping mall. It looks lovely enough and provides a pleasantly soporific effect amid the frantic jangle of the season's commerce but it is essentially artificial and not very nourishing, either spiritually or intellectually.

Perhaps the calculated gloss of this interminable five-hour sequel is an unavoidable byproduct of the tradition of success attached to Lucy Maud Montgomery's 100-year-old heroine. Anne has become a sort of cultural cash cow to the owners of the literary rights, to the tourist industry of Prince Edward Island, to the CBC (which broadcast the first Anne in 1985 for a record audience) and to Kevin Sullivan, the writer and director of both Annes. Clearly there is little to be gained by trifling with such success.

Except for some clumsy dubbing and the sort of padding that enables the broadcaster to sell more commercial spots, it's a pretty slick production. Based on three of Montgomery's novels, the sequel picks up on the saga as Anne spurns her childhood sweetheart, Gilbert Blythe (oddly, effeminately played by Jonathan Crombie), and sets out for the mainland to teach at a private girls' school. Town and school are dominated by a rich, repressed clan of Presbyterian stereotypes called the Pringles, who take an immediate dislike to the perky egalitariansism of Anne Shirley. Of course she does her best to charm and reform in her usual irrepressible and almost saintly manner. As well, she becomes a successful writer, reconciles her ambitions and ideals and comes to understand her true place in the world. All of this by the time she's 20!

The result is a sappy-sweet, fluorescent green fairy tale that will offend no one, please the converted and quickly enter the ranks of Goodhousekeeping Television Classics.

All this aside, there are three outstanding elements in the production: Megan Follows, Rosemary Dunsmore and Wendy Hiller.

Follows never falters in her portrayal of Anne. She has spent virtually half her young life as a professional actress and it shows. No matter how corny the line, how contrived the scene or how heated the behind-the- scenes squabbles between Sullivan and the CBC, Follows stays in character to the tip of her turned-up nose. It is a pleasure simply to watch such professionalism.

In this she is well matched by Dunsmore, who manages to wrest a few touching moments from an otherwise one-dimensionally misanthropic character (headmistress Brooke). Dunsmore invests the steely spinster with a deeply pathetic humanity that only Saint Anne is able to elicit. And as for Hiller, in some quarters her talent has been revered and treasured at least as far back as her appearance as Major Barbara in 1941. She dominates every moment she's on screen with as little as a sigh or a faint flicker of her eyelashes.

And finally, there is a breathtaking irony at the centre of all this. Although Anne Shirley is the most Canadian of Canadian heroines, she comes across as a U.S. archetype. She's an aggressive, outspoken, entrepreneurial, socially rebellious troublemaker. But then the series was partly financed by PBS and the Disney Channel, and played in the United States last April.

Source: The Globe and Mail

The Gazette - December 4, 1987

"Brilliantly crafted Green Gables sequel Follows naturally"
Mike Boone

It is probably impossible to improve on Anne of Green Gables, so Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel doesn't try.

We're not talking about an application of the Rocky I-to-MCMLX formula here. Instead of merely rehashing the original, Anne II takes the saga of Anne Shirley in new and different directions.

Anne's freckles are gone. So is some of her innocence. What remains is an utterly charming character and an entertaining and ageless story about the transition from youth to womanhood. Anne has grown up in the two-part special the CBC will telecast Sunday and Monday nights (CBMT-6 7:30 p.m.). The little girl adored by viewers two years ago, when Anne I became the most popular drama in the history of Canadian television, has become a young woman in Anne II.

This time around, there are fewer youthful hijinks. The heroine, played brilliantly again by Megan Follows, takes some pratfalls and loses her redhead's temper a few times, but much of Anne II is a serious story of what it was like to be young and in love in the early 1900s.

The common thread running from Anne of Green Gables through its five-hour sequel is the extraordinary skills writer/producer/director Kevin Sullivan applies to translating Lucy Maude Montgomery's stories to television.

From the opening shot - a dazzling view of Prince Edward Island's coastline, with Hagood Hardy's romantic score swelling up as musical accompaniment - Anne II is a magnificently crafted visual delight.

Sullivan's two Anne films have offered a rich, authentic look we just aren't accustomed to seeing in Canadian television. Great care has been taken to recreate, with maximum accuracy, the world of Montgomery's novels.

Of course, there is more to quality TV than first-rate production values. Anne II offers a story - albeit one that is somewhat thin - and superb acting.

We expect Follows to be terrific as Anne Shirley. She was a natural for the role the first time around, and Follows is even better in the more demanding role of an Anne coping with adult romance.

Former Montrealer Colleen Dewhurst, as Marilla Cuthbert, has a smaller role this time around - mainly because part of Anne II is set away from P.E.I. But Dewhurst is custimarily superb, as is guest star Dame Wendy Hiller.

There is also great work by actors of lesser repute. Jonathan Crombie, son of federal Secretary of State for Multiculturalism David Crombie, is back as Gilbert Blythe. The smitten schoolboy of Anne I has become a young man desperately - and, for much of Anne II, vainly - in love with Anne Shirley.

Frank Converse, familiar to viewers as the actor whose rich baritone sings the praises of Black and Decker kitchen appliances, plays Morgan Harris, the "older man" in Anne's life. Viewers will have to stick with the special through most of Monday night to find out which man wins Anne.

Chances are that most Canadians will be glued to their sets for both nights' episodes. The CBC has scheduled Anne II cleverly. Each 2 1/2-hour episode begins at 7:30 - early enough to lure youngsters who will insist on staying up until 10 to watch the whole program.

Anne of Green Gables began on the CBC Dec. 1, 1985, and played to 4.9 million viewers. The next night's concluding episode had an audience of 5.8 million - a record for Canadian drama.

The weekend's safest bet: Anne II will top the ratings of Anne I.

Source: The Gazette

The Ottawa Citizen - December 5, 1987

"Anne II a worthy heir to TV phenomenon"
Tony Atherton

There's no question what most of the nation's TV watchers will be tuned into Sunday.

Anne of Green Gables - The Sequel is the most eagerly awaited Canadian TV drama ever. It's expected to pull in the kind of numbers normally reserved for sudden death Canada Cup championships.

The original Anne, also written, directed, and produced by Kevin Sullivan, inspired such emotional response when it aired in 1985, viewers can't wait for the sequel to transport them to the same heights.

Such keen expectations, honed over two years, and sharpened by a string of rave reviews when the sequel had its U.S. premiere on the Disney Channel last spring, may be the film's biggest problem.

Anne of Green Gables - The Sequel has been created with as much care as the original, and boasts the same fine cast, playing just as strongly. But there is little in Lucy Maude Montgomery's later works - Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars - upon which the sequel is based, to match the instant appeal of the original.

It's something Sullivan himself has recognized. It's why he had to patch together his screenplay from three novels, and why he says there will never be an Anne III.

Despite this, viewers will not be disappointed with the new Anne. It delivers the same warm feelings. It just takes a little longer for the magic to take hold.

In many ways, The Sequel is a carbon copy of the original. But first there's a re-introduction of the characters which takes up much of the first night of this two-part miniseries.

We find Anne can still get herself in a pickle, though she's now a respected member of Avonlea society and harboring romantic dreams of being a writer. Her best friend and "kindred spirit," Diana, has become engaged to someone not at all like the dashing young beaus the two had vowed they would wed. Fearing her dreams, too, will be betrayed, she refuses childhood rival Gilbert Blythe's proposal of marriage.

Instead, encouraged by Marilla, she leaves Avonlea to take a post as English teacher at a private girls' school in the wealthy, smug community of Kinsport.

Kingsport's spoiled society leaders don't take kindly to the spirited new English professor, and Anne is back to doing what she did so ably in the original, winning over hearts just by persevering.

Anne first must deal with the girls in her class who seem bent on making her life difficult. Among them she finds one sensitive soul, much like herself, who needs an understanding friend. Her widowed father, handsome and self-absorbed, both repels and attracts Anne. His mother, the crochety family matriarch, is the subject upon whom Anne's wiles wreak the most dramatic change.

Through all this, Anne is learning her own lesson about the differences between love and romance. Just when she realizes she may have been too hasty with Gilbert, she learns he may no longer be there for her.

Megan Follows again puts in a winning performance as Anne, easily handling the portrayal of a determined young woman who is afraid to leave behind the dreams of adolescence. This Anne is nearer Follows's own age of 19, and she makes her as believable and appealing as her earlier Annes of 12 and 16.

Colleen Dewhurst is as formidable as ever as Anne's loving guardian Marilla. And, though the characters must suffer through without the gentle presence of actor Richard Farnsworth (whose character died in the original), Dame Wendy Hiller is a treat as the self-centred widow whose reformation is Anne's chief project.

Sullivan again manages to serve up honest emotion without having to indulge in sentiment. His sequel is a worthy heir to what has become a Canadian TV phenomenon.

Source: The Ottawa Citizen