I've been knitting and watching shows, which has led me to try to find stuff that's good to watch while crafting, especially things on Kanopy.

I was going to do a bunch of these in a post, but the first got long, so stand by for further knitting show thoughts.

North and South (2004)

(I haven't read the book, though I keep meaning to get into Elizabeth Gaskell, who is recommended when you run out of George Eliot.)

A star crossed romance between Daniela Denby-Ashe as an impoverished daughter of an auto-defrocked churchman from Hampshire, and Richard Armitage as a self-made cotton mill owner in Lancashire "Darkshire"* (amazing name, thank you, Mrs Gaskell). He's in the middle of putting down a strike, and she's in the middle of being appalled by the violence of literally everything that's happening. The main attachment between them seems to be that they are both stunningly beautiful, and appear even more attractive when they are sad. Which they are a lot.

So... he's a strike-breaking mill owner in 1855, who sets the army on his workers? (Which they are careful not to show in detail because it might distract us from how very beautiful Richard Armitage is when he's sad.) Absolutely no one talks about where all the cotton's coming from, other than "America."† He does, later in the show, come to be more sympathetic to the workers, and start actually talking to them and shit, but the strikebreaking is a lot to get past. If you're likely to spend much of the show humming "The Internationale," then maybe give this a skip. If you don't mind/can ignore that, the pining is excellent, and the actors are very beautiful.

Quality as knitting show: 4/5, would knit to this again.

( End Notes )