Anne of Green Gables

A passable adaptation of LM Montgomery's children's classic, beginning well with the placidly fraught arrival in a backwoods town of the orphan girl whose horrified adoptive parents instantly protest that they actually ordered a boy (the atmosphere helped no end by Heggie's lovely performance as the henpecked husband who slyly - and mutely - rebels in her favour). After that the plot begins to develop galloping consumption in order to get everything in, while simultaneously sliding into sentimentality. A further hazard is the lead performance by former child star Dawn O'Day (who adopted the professional name of Anne Shirley after the character she enacts here): much too knowingly sophisticated in playing the wilfully imaginative child, she makes one feel that what the dear thing really rates is a sound thrashing.