Normally BBC productions of Jane Austen are pretty good but Northanger Abbey is just odd. What were they thinking? This film has little of Austen's charm and ironically mimics the Gothic novels that Austen so wonderfully mocked. Not only that, the "gothic" sequences are tacky, over-the-top, and frankly silly. The actress playing Miss Morland is poorly cast with no obvious appeal to attract the attentions of an eligible bachelor, and though I rather liked the creepy Peter Firth as Mr. Tilney, he is not a bit like the novel, even when delivering dialog straight out of the book. Robert Hardy as General Tilney turned in one of his few terribly "ham" performances. This film was so bizarre and strange that I actually watched it again just to savor how freakishly wrong it was.
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