A Year In Provence

Based on the bestselling book by Peter Mayle, the review copy of A Year in Provence--originally airing on the A&E channel--arrived in a nicely packaged boxed set along with a couple of reviewer perks (a tote bag and a copy of the book). With somewhat elevated expectations, we popped the opening volume into the VCR and sat back, prepared to witness an insider's view of provincial life in Provence, located in the rustic Luberon Valley region of Southern France. A dramatization, A Year in Provence stars John Thaw as Peter Mayle and Lindsay Duncan as Annie Mayle, and the program opens with the Mayle's bidding the hectic life of London adieu and moving into their new 200-year-old stone farmhouse in Provence. Almost immediately, the problems begin: both for the Mayle's and for the viewer. The Mayle's battle the legendary Mistral wind, try to figure out the erratic time schedule of the refinishing crew working on their house, and go on a frantic search for truffles (it says something that the scene of the pig vigorously snuffling through the dirt, hunting for truffles, is the best in the opening volume). Falling somewhere between a travelogue and a British sitcom, A Year in Provence's greatest error is to have the French actors speaking voluminous amounts of French, which Annie Mayle then translates to Peter (effectively doubling the length of many already tedious scenes). If that isn't irritating enough, we're offered such tiresome stock situations as a quartet of French gastronomic experts in a butcher's shop yelling at one another in French while the Mayle's smile knowingly and burble obnoxious little condescending bon mots. I considered it a Sisyphean-like labor to watch all of the opening volume, after which I picked up the enclosed book to see what all the hullabaloo was about. In the case of most video review magazines, an accompanying book is most likely a harmless addition; however, sending the book to a library publication may not have been an altogether wise choice. To make a long story short, I fell in love with the book almost instantaneously and did a very unprofessional thing: put the remainder of the video series aside and read the book from cover to cover. Yawn-producing scenes in the video were handled in the book often in a single clever sentence, and Mayle's heartwarming descriptive prose carried neither the tons of extraneous French nor the endless scenes of pat and totally unconvincing English dialogue. In other words, the two bore little resemblance to one another. I wholeheartedly recommend the book (and its sequel Toujours Provence) for anyone looking for a pleasant read. As for the video series, purchase according to demand; otherwise I'd skip it. (Available from most distributors.)