Having read and re-read the book and Toujours Provence, my wife and I were really looking forward to watching the adaptation. What a let-down it was. The acting of the two main characters in particular is painfully forced and unnecessarily farcical - it has become a pantomime. The book is genuinely charming, while this is genuinely charmless, cheesy and just rubbish. We also found it insulting to the French locals: in the book, they are gregarious of course, but not bumpkins, simple, or mad. The adaptation completely overemphasises the cultural stereotypes and again is just painfully "British". It was a real letdown. We gave up after the fourth episode before it ruined the book for us.
Review of A Year in Provence
