Tales From Avonlea - The Complete First Season

TALES FROM AVONLEA:SEASON ONE - DVD Movie

Set in turn-of-the-century Canada, this Emmy-winning children’s classic is drawn from four novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame (notably The Story Girl and The Golden Road). Known as Avonlea in the US and Road to Avonlea north of the border, Tales From Avonlea presents the first season of the CBC/Disney Channel co-production. When her widowed father is accused of embezzlement, wealthy, wide-eyed Sara (Sarah Polley, The Sweet Hereafter) is sent to live with working class relatives on Prince Edward Island ("The Journey Begins"). Thus marks the start of seven years in tight-knit Avonlea. Sara's maternal family, the Kings, assume she'll be arriving from Montreal alone, but she's accompanied by the imposing Nanny Banks (Frances Hyland), who immediately starts pushing everyone around, so Sarah's aunts, Hettie (Jackie Burroughs) and Olivia (Mag Ruffman), send her away. Sarah is heartbroken. Plus her cousins Felix (Zachary Bennett) and Felicity (Gema Zamprogna) are most unkind, but cousin Andrew (Joel Blake), who is more mature than the rest, becomes a fast friend (while Felicity gets her comeuppance in "Proof of the Pudding").

Throughout the year Sarah will make other friends, like shy inventor/photographer Jasper Dale (R.H. Thomson). With his help, she'll convince a wealthy businessman to make a sizable donation to the school library fund. "You are unstoppable," Dale tells her in "The Story Girl Earns Her Name." Then there's pious busybody Rachel Lynde (Patricia Hamilton). She and Sarah will bond after a smallpox epidemic brings them together in "The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's." Other friends include Peg Bowen (Susan E. Cox), "The Witch of Avonlea," and Lynde's housemate, Marilla Cuthbert (Colleen Dewhurst, who previously appeared with Hamilton in 1985's Anne of Green Gables). Avonlea ran for six more seasons and became Canada's longest-running, highest-rated TV series. --Kathleen C. Fennessy