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Rating:  - Danger alert: 30 minutes cut!
Just a quick note -- I went over to Amazon.com.uk -- Northanger Abbey is 120 minutes in UK -- in US, only about 90 minutes.... No wonder it felt a bit clunky in the Masterpiece Theatre version!
Rating:  - Disappointed! Cut Scenes
I join the other reviewers who were disappointed about the missing and cut scenes that were un-aired on PBS, but a part of the original airing on ITV in the UK. I purchased Persuasion, which is a part of the same Masterpiece Classic series, and the un-aired scenes were included on the DVD. Therefore, I fully expected this adaptation to include those scenes and I am unsure why the few minutes were left out.
Overall, however, the adaptation was quite good, if a bit rushed, especially at the end. Northanger is a hard book to adapt for the screen, as the past BBC version exemplifies. This version is very enjoyable with the two leads capturing the spirit of the roles, and the atmosphere a good balance between the ridiculous and the mysterious.
Rating:  - Missing scenes?
I absolutely love this adaptation, but I am disappointed that there are missing scenes in the DVD such as Mrs. Allen and Catherine in the tearoom, Catherine's bathtub fantasy, and Miss Tilney and Catherine's conversation to name a few. Though they were short scenes that don't take away from the overall plot, I expected to get the entire movie for what I paid for. I still love the DVD, but I didn't expect to miss parts from the movie.
Rating: - Very good but not perfect.
This version is far better than the old 1980's BBC version. The cast is excellent. The actress playing Catherine Morland was very close to how I pictured the character to be. The actor playing Henry Tilney was actually handsome and charming, something the previous actor in the role definitely was not. It was amusing seeing Sylvestra Le Touzel (my apologies if I spelled her name wrong), the Fanny Price from the old BBC version of Mansfield Park, as Mrs. Allen. She was also good in the part. I also found the little fantasy sequences from Catherine's novel reading to be very amusing.
I do have a few complaints about this version. One is that it was too short. Some of the action felt a bit rushed and I found myself explaining a lot of things to my husband, who has not read the book. Secondly, I would have preferred it if the writer had used a bit more of Jane Austen's dialogue from the book. I could not believe they left out the best lines, "I cannot speak well enough to be unitelligible." "Bravo!-an excellent satire on modern language." And of course, there were those several small deviations from the book that annoy die hard Jane Austen fans like myself.
Criticisms aside, for those who want a DVD version of this book, I would definitely recommend this version over the older one.
Rating: - So-So Adaptation
Northanger Abbey is not, as noted by others, the easiest story to adapt to film and here I think they've only done a so-so job. The casting is all right, the heroine is appealing if pretty sappy and the story hasn't been mutilated too badly. However, like all the other new "Masterpiece" productions, Northanger rips along leaving out a lot and creating gaps that make the plot seem murky and/or really silly. Overall, not that good and definitely not up to previous versions. And, please, who decided that Gillian Anderson would make a good introducer for the new Masterpiece? She's terrible and the new format, if that is what it is, is not an improvement.
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