The Life and Loves of a She-Devil

Saw this on A&E back in '92 or so, too bad I didn't tape it. It was excellent. The more popular She-Devil movie is a horrible travesty of this work.

The main character is a woman who is extremely unappreciated by her husband. She is so demoralized by him that she exacts a increasingly insidious revenge.

Excellent because it is so believable, accurate portrayal of the darker side of human emotions.

If you notice this will be on cable soon, please email me and let me know what channel!!

Nancy

This was novel writing at its best and became TV at its best. I knew Phillip Saville, the director, and this was his best but the hard centre of sheer quality came from Fay Weldon, a friend then and still a friend. She is a really nice woman but deploys a brilliant venom in the interests of her art. She is currently (July 2001) writing her autobiography and it will be interesting to see how closely she admits to connections to her then husband Ron's behaviour.

This is one of the best transpositions of a novel to film I have ever seen. Unfortunately few people in the US know about this production; they know only about the atrocious version with Roseanne & M. Streep. The casting & acting in this one are flawless. One of my favorite books & one of my favorite films.

It has been years since I have seen this series, but it has stayed permanently embedded in my mind. Everything that poor Ruth went through and then to see her revenge acted out was perfect. One of the few movies I have seen that does not diminish the quality of the book. 10/10

PS - The movie with Rosanne and Meryl Streep (She-Devil) fails miserably in capturing even a bit of the excellence of this series.

I saw this series eleven years ago on the A&E network and was absolutely enthralled. One of the best parts is when Ruth frees Mary's hilariously senile mother from a retirement home and releases her on Mary's beautiful world. In an age when every irritating, mindless piece of you-know-what is released on tape and DVD, it astounds me that this masterpiece remains mysteriously shelved somewhere.