Sullivan has described as ''a completely original story.'' For this installment the dramatists have gone off into dangerous territory, to create what Mr. While those productions took some liberties, particularly with time (placing Anne in the early 1900's instead of the 1880's), they faithfully remained connected to the books by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Though also the work of Kevin Sullivan, who created this handsomely produced Canadian series, ''The Continuing Story'' differs significantly from the first two parts. ''The Continuing Story'' completes the trilogy. Megan Follows has resisted that temptation, though she began playing Anne in 1985, when she was 16, in the television mini-series that would become a popular video Cliff's Notes for young readers, and again in a 1987 sequel. A 1934 version starred an actress named Dawn O'Day, who changed her name professionally to Anne Shirley after the character she played. The book was made into a silent film in 1919. They have catapulted their heroine into the thick of all kinds of adventures that merely include engagement and marriage to her longtime beau, Gilbert Blythe, a romantic triangle, publishing intrigue, espionage and war.Ĭlearly Anne has gone a long way from Avonlea, the Canadian setting of ''Anne of Green Gables,'' a book that remains on sixth-grade reading lists almost a century after it was first published. It seems that the creators of this two-part mini-series, which presents the famous red-haired orphan girl as an adult, have taken the publisher's advice to heart. With the war in Europe diverting the attention of men, he says, he wants stories that will appeal to women, but they should be adventure stories. He does give her a job as an editor and tells her what kind of book he wants to publish. After complaining about the sorry state of the business, he compliments her work and then rejects it.
It's 1915, but her meeting with the company's head would sound familiar today. In ''Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story,'' Anne Shirley makes her way to a publishing house in New York to peddle a manuscript.