I’m not sure if I expected to hate Sense and Sensibility, but I initially had little interest in seeing it. And maybe the same could be said for other movies or TV series based on 18th or 19th century novels.
Yet, we’ve watched it many times, and I never get bored with it. I just love the mild comedy and the interaction between the characters.
I do enjoy watching anything based in the 18th or early 19th century. Here’s a little list:
- Bleak House
- Little Dorrit
- Middlemarch
- Martin Chuzzlewith
- Pride and Prejudice
- The Barchester Chronicles
- Middlemarch
- North & South
- Our Mutual Friend
- Sharpe
- Hornblower
- Wuthering Heights
- Poldark
- War and Peace
- The Pallisers
- The Way We Love Now
- Room with a View
- Enchanted April
I generally watch these with my wife. We do watch other movies as a family. On my own, I usually prefer documentaries. I do re-watch old movies, such as the James Bond movies out of nostalgia, but there in no way as magical as they were to me in my younger years. And I hardly ever watch really modern movies. I did watch Son of God a few weeks ago. I have attempted to watch other movies based on the Bible, but I tend to prefer reading the Bible. However, over the years, the movies about Jesus Himself always impressed me. And I saw Cecil B DeMille’s 10 Commandments when I was 10, and I loved it. Maybe I should attempt to watch it again. It’s nice to get a feel for what life might have been like in Biblical times, but I generally don’t find movies compelling.
Anyway, let’s get back to the 18th century and finish with four hymns from that period. It’s funny how ridiculous clergy appear in all these old series. Prior to and apart from the 18th century revivals, religion was growing stale and drifting towards deism and even atheism.
But I liked the Methodists in Poldark. In fact, seeing them back in 1979 made me want to be like them. It was one of the links in the chain that led me to commit my life to Christ in 1980. There was nothing particularly special about Methodists as a denomination. In fact, it didn’t even become a separate denomination until the Wesleys passed away. But they were very much the evangelical wing of the Church of England. In fact, the Wesleys and others like them were very much the beginning of the revival of the New Testament emphasis on the need to personally commit your life to Christ rather than just follow your cultural religion, even if it’s some form of Christianity.
Hibernia Gospel 