The A&E Romance Collection
July 22nd, 2008 by Laura Moncur in Literature
How could I resist it? It was a huge box of costume drama from the BBC and A&E. I HAD to buy it, but the name… The Romance Collection? Really? Couldn’t you find a better name than that?
Sure, Pride and Prejudice and Emma would be considered romance, but the rest, I’m not so sure about. Jane Eyre falls into the Gothic horror category. Victoria and Albert is more of a story about political intrigue. Ivanhoe? The Scarlet Pimpernel?
Seriously, if Tom Jones is considered a romance, then there is something drastically wrong with my brain. The story is more a morality play than a romance, isn’t it?
I haven’t watched Lorna Doone yet, but a young man whose family is murdered during a civil war isn’t really the kind of guy who can just brush that off and fall into a romance. Is he?
I’m not complaining. I’m happy with the thirty luscious hours of period piece drama, but I really wouldn’t have called it The Romance Collection.