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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Kingsley Amis's poignantly comic novel Take a Girl Like You is here brilliantly adapted for television by Andrew Davies. In the 1950s, a young northern girl arrives to become a primary school teacher in a stifling home-counties town. Even as she steps off the train and makes her way through the streets to her boarding house, she exudes waves of untainted sexuality that become an immediate target for the frustrations and libidos of the men in her wake. What follows is a rites of passage tale for both Jenny Bunn, the girl, and Patrick Standish, the young Lothario who pursues her, wins her and, as his final sad voiceover reveals, ultimately loses her.
Sienna Guillem blossoms as Jenny, perplexed by and finally resigned to her own allure. The magnificent cast also includes Robert Daws as the porcine boarding house landlord and Emma Chambers spitting acid barbs as his permanently disappointed wife Martha. Rupert Graves adds Patrick Standish to his repertoire of flawed, attractive young men. In one key scene, he encounters a winning cameo from Leslie Phillips as an ageing roué, and it's as if he's caught a glimpse of himself 40 years down the line. Take a Girl Like You is BBC drama at its finest. --Piers Ford
From the Back Cover
It's the summer of 1959, and English society is soon to embrace the Pill and sexual liberation. A gorgeous young teacher, Jenny Bunn, arrives in town to a new job at a local primary school. The moment that Patrick Standish sees her he knows he must have her. But he is not alone in wanting Jenny: there's her landlord, Dick; an aristocratic friend, Julian; Patrick's unattractive flatmate, Graham; and her French housemate, Anna. It seems that Patrick's determination that he will be first past the post is matched by Jenny's steely determination that he won't...
Adapted from Kingsley Amis' classic novel by award-winning screenwriter Andrew Davies, Take a Girl Like You is funny, sexy and pulsating with the vitality of the late 50s. It is backed by a breezy, sensual jazz soundtrack from musicians such as Jimmy Guiffre, Gerry Mulligan, Coleman Hawkins and Lou Donaldson.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
This is Kingsley Amis at his perceptive best. Over 60? Then if you're English, you'll remember those lost "You've-never-had-it-so-good" days of cosy pubs, warm beer and windy station platforms. Prosperity, colour and sunshine seemed to come flooding back after the grey "utility" days of the war years.Under 60, or even 30? Then here's a bit of social history well worth seeing. You can almost smell the inside of the dingy boarding house of the early scenes; the cabbage water, the gas from the geyser,the cheap shampoo and the french polish. This production catches the attitudes, the mores, the slowly slipping standards inculcated by Church and Chapel since time immemorial and which the War had done much to loosen. Achingly pretty Jenny Bunn arrives from "Up North" to teach in a Home Counties town, somewhere near London. Her innocence is about to be rudely undone. Patrick Standish ("Randy Standy" to his friends), a handsome young Cambridge graduate who teaches at the local posh (public) school, falls head over heels in love with her. The film is the story of his courtship, her attraction to him and yet her moral reluctance to go "All the way". The film is peopled with delightful characters from the period: posh cads, dirty rotters, a moth eaten lord and lady or two, jealous females and much more. It is a little glossy - perhaps for the American market? - but none the worse for that. You will laugh a lot, weep a little, and be bewitched by the music of the period, well played, which will put you and keep you in the mood until the end. Don't miss it, it is quite as good as the better costume dramas the BBC also does so well.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Kingsley Amis's sharply observed and bitingly funny 1960 novel of heterosexual relations at a time of rapid cultural change, still very much worth reading, has been filmed twice. A 1970 screen adaptation (now out on DVD) unwisely moved the action well into the "swinging 60s" and made many changes in plot and characters, all for the worse. The result feels dated and unconvincing, and often curiously smarmy and sexist. The lovely Hayley Mills as Jenny Bunn, the "girl" of the title, Sheila Hancock as Martha and Penelope Keith, in a cameo as a poll worker, provide moments of genuine enjoyment. Oliver Reed, however, seems miscast as modern rake Patrick Standish, and comes across mostly as glum and uncertain.
In 2000, the BBC made this excellent 3-part TV film set firmly in the right period, with an expert screenplay by Andrew Davies, lively and assured direction by Nick Hurran and a fine cast headed by Sienna Guillory as Jenny and Rupert Graves (in top "romantic bad boy" form) as Patrick, Hugh Bonneville, Emma Chambers and Robert Daws; Leslie Phillips makes a brief, memorable appearance. While some of the more lacerating aspects of Amis have been toned down - most notably, Patrick's ultimate conquest of Jenny, which in the novel essentially constitutes "date rape," is more ambiguously consensual - overall it's a success. Issued only on VHS in the U.K. (and never in any form in North America) it's overdue for release on DVD.
In 2000, the BBC made this excellent 3-part TV film set firmly in the right period, with an expert screenplay by Andrew Davies, lively and assured direction by Nick Hurran and a fine cast headed by Sienna Guillory as Jenny and Rupert Graves (in top "romantic bad boy" form) as Patrick, Hugh Bonneville, Emma Chambers and Robert Daws; Leslie Phillips makes a brief, memorable appearance. While some of the more lacerating aspects of Amis have been toned down - most notably, Patrick's ultimate conquest of Jenny, which in the novel essentially constitutes "date rape," is more ambiguously consensual - overall it's a success. Issued only on VHS in the U.K. (and never in any form in North America) it's overdue for release on DVD.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Superb
A superb BBC drama, one that sadly hasn't been shown for quite a while on the BBC nor does it seem to be available on DVD. A pity, this show deserves to be on DVD / Blu-ray .. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Mr. A. Buckle
Take A Girl Like You [VHS] [2000]
A good , if rather raunchy story, with a good cast, typical of the era, with the now familiar Emma Chambers - not then a well-known face, as Alice Tinker, Dawn French`s verger... Read more
Published 15 months ago by E. Lumsden
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