There are differences between "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "I'll Fly Away", but I find that the similarities make them very much "birds of a feather." They are set 26 about years apart. TKAM famously begins, "Macomb was a tired old town, even in 1932, when I first knew it." It's harder to pin down the time of IFA, but several sources place it in 1958. I thought that we saw John F. Kennedy assassinated in an episode, but I don't rightly recall. Forrest Bedford would have been about ten years older than Scout, Jem and Dill were in 1932 -- right between the ages of the kids and "Boo" Radley.
Beyond the differences, it's the setup and the subject that are paired: a single lawyer father (virtually single, in the case of IFA, until they killed off Gwen in order to clear the way for a guilt-free romance with Miss LeKatzis) in a Southern town with a black housekeeper, a couple of kids, and the ever-present tensions between black and white.
Then there is the matter of the housekeeper's name: Harper Lee. Lilly Harper. Coincidence? I rather doubt it.
I also think it is not coincidental that both works were set about exactly 30 years in the past, about the distance in time between their settings.
As PBS always says when they air it, it was "too good for television." I agree, and cherish my aging VHS copies and hope they'll eventually be available on DVD.
Beyond the differences, it's the setup and the subject that are paired: a single lawyer father (virtually single, in the case of IFA, until they killed off Gwen in order to clear the way for a guilt-free romance with Miss LeKatzis) in a Southern town with a black housekeeper, a couple of kids, and the ever-present tensions between black and white.
Then there is the matter of the housekeeper's name: Harper Lee. Lilly Harper. Coincidence? I rather doubt it.
I also think it is not coincidental that both works were set about exactly 30 years in the past, about the distance in time between their settings.
As PBS always says when they air it, it was "too good for television." I agree, and cherish my aging VHS copies and hope they'll eventually be available on DVD.