Perfectly Prudence

This movie is still good in spite of how hard they deliberately tried to ruin it.

"Dear Prudence" was great, a woman who gets dragged into being a detective by circumstance. She was assisted by a young lad, somewhat reminiscent of the "Hettie Wainthrop" series starring Patricia Routledge.

So how did they try to ruin it? First of all, Prudence is no longer a detective. This was the main point of the entire show, which has now been eliminated completely. Kind of like making an episode of Miss Marple where she turns out to be a knitting instructor on TV instead of a sleuth. I was at about 1:20 in to the film when I finally decided that nobody was going to get murdered.

Second, in "Dear Prudence" her assistant was young, perhaps teenage, cute, shy and geeky, with lots of personality. In "Perfectly Prudence" they have replaced him with a late-twenties, pudgy, unattractive geek with the personality of clammy dumpling dough. Removes half the reason to watch the show.

The other half of the reason, though, Jane Seymour, is quite delightful. She is still looking very good.

Unexpectedly, the movie is stolen by Valerie Azlynn, who has a real flair for comedy. Her crying scenes are particularly hilarious.

I think it's very ironic that the plot of "Perfectly Prudence" is about the network executives trying to ruin her TV show, destroying everything it stood for and totally revamping it purely for the sake of money, when that is exactly what they did to "Dear Prudence!"