Tuesday 2 February 2016

NANCHERROW (FRENCH REGION 2 DVD)

Cornwall, 1947. When Colonel Carey-Lewis dies, his daughter Loveday inherits Nancherrow, the family estate. She wants to keep the ancestral home alive so that her son will eventually take over from her but her husband, a farmer, doesn't want to move to the manor. It's the start of a long struggle against financial problems that could even bring her supportive mother Diana to personal bankruptcy.  

Gus Callender, Loveday's true love, reappears in her life. Meanwhile, her friend Judith, married to Dr. Jeremy Wells, suffers a new miscarriage. The life of Jess , the younger sister of Loveday, takes an unexpected turn.

Nancherrow is the 1999 two-part sequel of Coming Home (1998), the adaptation of the 1995 namesake novel written by British romance author Rosamunde Pilcher. It's available since February on French Region 2 DVD from Koba Films (as La Dynastie Carey-Lewis - Nancherrow). Written, like Coming Home, by John Goldsmith (Danny, the Champion of the World, The Return of The Saint) and directed by Simon Langton (Pride and Prejudice), this 2 X 100-minute serial is once again an Anglo-German co-production from Portman Entertainment and Tele München.

Rosamunde Pilcher, who reached international recognition in 1987 with the bestseller The Shell Seekers, is particularly popular in Germany thanks to viewers of pubcaster ZDF. Since 1993, the channel aired more than 100 adaptations of her books in the Rosamunde Pilcher Collection. A majority of them are commissioned by ZDF and filmed in England, usually in Cornwall, with German actors and sometimes a couple of English guest stars. A few are international co-productions with a British main cast and some were simply bought for the collection.

Most of the cast of Coming Home is in Nancherrow: Joanna Lumley as Diana Carey-Lewis, Katie Ryder Richardson (Loveday), Patrick Ryecart (Tommy Mortimer), Susan Hampshire (Miss Catto) and George Asprey (Jeremy). There are a few replacements and the more noticeable is definitely Lara-Joy Körner as Judith, played by Emily Richardson in Coming Home. Philipp Moog, a familiar face of German television, plays Gus. Walter is performed by English actor Tristan Gemmill. Joanna Lumley shares scenes with the legendary Patrick Macnee, who appears as Lord  Awliscombe (both played of course in The New Avengers).

There's also Christian Kohlund, Austrian actress Senta Berger, Samantha Beckinsale, Simon Dutton, etc. Aired on ITV and ZDF during spring 1999, Nancherrow is a honourable follow-up to Coming Home. In France the former was coupled to the latter and shown on M6 in 2001 as La Dynastie des Carey-Lewis. Koba Films releases Nancherrow in a two-disc set with the original dialogue track (subtitled or not) and a good dubbing by Dub'Club (American Horror Story, White Collar). Jean Fontaine and Xavier Varaillon wrote the French dialogues.

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