Series · Netflix · 2017

Anne with an E

A child is wanted, taught, and allowed to become more than useful. Keep this one.

This is the Montgomery story told with more bruise than the old television version, and the bruise is mostly honest. Anne has been used by adults before Green Gables. The series does not skip that in order to keep her quaint. What it keeps, and what matters, is a house that decides she belongs in it, a school that is worth fighting to enter, and a girl whose imagination is aimed at a life and not only at a feeling.

The later episodes push harder on the cruelties of the period than a small child needs. Start with the first season, with the family in the room. Ask them why Marilla, who did not want a girl, becomes the person Anne cannot do without.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A farm still has to be worked. Imagination is not a substitute for the chores, and the show knows it.
Household
9/10
Matthew and Marilla choose a girl the world had already filed as inconvenient.
Piety
6/10
Prayer and Sunday are ordinary. Doubt is allowed without making faith the villain.
Courage
8/10
Anne defends the smaller child and tells the truth when it will cost her the room.
Republic
7/10
Avonlea is a town with a school, a busybody, and a standard it sometimes fails.
Temperance
8/10
Temper is her fault, and the story does not call the fault a gift.
Truth
8/10
She embellishes, and she is corrected. The correction is love.
Stewardship
9/10
An education, a name, and a place are being made for someone who arrived with nothing.

Live historicallyLearn the name of one child in your town who is being raised by someone who did not have to take her.

Series · Netflix · 2021

Maid

Work, a child, and the paperwork of getting free. Hard to watch. Worth it for a grown house.

Alex is not a symbol. She is a woman counting dollars in a car seat while her daughter sleeps, and the series is brave enough to stay with the counting. The charm of the man she left is not denied. That is why the leaving is hard, and why the show is more honest than a poster about strength. It is also bleak, and some hours are too much.

Not for children. For a grown son or daughter who has started to think poverty is a personality, it is a correction. Watch it, then look at what your own house pays other people to do.

The eight

Industry
9/10
Cleaning houses is filmed as labor with a wage, a body, and a clock. Rare, and right.
Household
7/10
She is trying to make a safe house for one child. The men who love her make it harder.
Piety
4/10
Desperation is honest. Faith is mostly absent, and not mocked.
Courage
8/10
Leaving, with no money and a toddler, is the bravest thing in the week's shelf.
Republic
6/10
Shelters, courts, and benefits are shown as a country a poor woman has to learn.
Temperance
6/10
Drinking and charm are given their bill. The show does not find them romantic for long.
Truth
9/10
It tells the truth about money: the difference between being helped and being trapped is often a deposit.
Stewardship
8/10
Everything she does is so the girl will not inherit the house she is escaping.

Live historicallyPay someone who works in your house, or on it, fully and on time. If you are that person, keep one dollar you do not have to explain.