Since this is a film of The CHIMNEYS of Green Knowe, any reviewer mistaking it for the CHILDREN of Green Knowe will naturally be disappointed. I saw the 1980s series The Children of Green Knowe, and I loved it. It inspired me to go out to the house outside of Cambridge (where I live) where Lucy M Boston lived, and I loved that too. But this film had a much more exciting story to tell, and a much more wonderful cast to tell it through, and I thought the screenplay and direction by Julian Fellowes were perfect, as were the performances, especially those of Alex Etel and Maggie Smith. For some reason I never read the Green Knowe books as a child, so I came to the TV adaptations (both the 80s series and this masterful new one) fresh, and could enjoy them without preconceptions. Although I love Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey very much, it has never moved me the way From Time To Time has. I wept happily throughout the last twenty minutes, and I am a large hairy tweed-clad old man with a bristling moustache and (I'm told) a somewhat forbidding manner. It introduced me to a whole new world, or several worlds, all so life-like that it was like inhabiting them myself. It is late now, I am going to bed soon, and I hope to dream myself back to it.
Review of From Time to Time
