Film

Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel

Anne Shirley has grown into a young woman navigating teaching, ambition, and the pull between independence and belonging. This 1987 sequel deepens her romance with Gilbert while exploring her dream of becoming a published writer. It's intimate, unhurried television—the kind that lets you settle into a character's inner life across nearly four hours of screen time. For anyone who loves period romance grounded in real emotional stakes.

TMDb rating4.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a long, gently episodic coming-of-age story where a young writer's ambitions and friendships unfold at a leisurely pace, and you already love the characters.

Skip it if you need a tight plot or brisk pacing, because at nearly four hours this sprawls through small incidents and wanders between school and home.

What it asks of you: It asks for roughly four hours of patience, settling into a gentle, unhurried rhythm with a lot of talk, small domestic moments and few big set pieces.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Road to Avonlea1990

A spiritual successor set in the same world, following Anne's extended family with the same warmth and attention to small-town life. It captures that same magic of community, season-turning, and characters you genuinely care about.

But Moves away from Anne as the central figure, so it requires embracing new protagonists. Some storylines drift toward melodrama in ways the original films don't.

Road to Avonlea poster

The Essex Serpent2022

A woman intellectual navigating expectation and desire in a historical setting, surrounded by beautiful landscapes and complicated relationships. It has that same quality of interior richness—watching a mind work through the world.

But More explicitly adult in its sexuality and grief. The tone is melancholy where Anne tends toward hope, even in sadness.

The Essex Serpent poster

Pride and Prejudice

The BBC miniseries that defined literary adaptation for television. Elizabeth Bennet is Anne's spiritual cousin—witty, principled, and learning to see love clearly. Six hours of absolute craft.

But Published in 1813; the social context is more constrained than Anne's world. Also extremely famous, so you're not discovering anything.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Anne with an E2017

Same source material, same character, but a completely different thesis about what Anne's story means—where the 1987 film asks 'will love find her,' this asks 'will she survive becoming a woman.'

A 2017 reimagining that begins with the earlier books and develops into something far darker—exploring racism, sexuality, trauma, and mental health in Avonlea. If you loved Anne's internal life, this version takes it seriously as interior complexity rather than charm.

But Radically tonal shifts will alienate purists. It's angry where the 1987 film is gentle, and some scenes are genuinely disturbing. This is not cozy television.

Anne with an E poster
More like this (6)

Our Souls at Night2017

An intimate adaptation about two older people finding connection and writing their own story, with the same faith in quietness and small moments that Anne values. Jane Fonda and Robert Redford bring decades of life to their characters.

But No young love or romantic tension as we typically understand it. Some may find the slowness of an older love story less immediately engaging.

Our Souls at Night poster

Grantchester2014

A clergyman solving crimes in 1950s Cambridge, but really a show about ambition, faith, and finding where you belong. Beautifully shot, deeply character-driven, with romance that develops at human speed.

But Male protagonist, crime drama elements, and a very English sensibility. None of the quirky charm or fairy-tale optimism of Anne.

Grantchester poster

Becoming Jane2007

A young writer finding her voice against the constraints of her era and family, with James McAvoy as a romantic foil. It's speculative biography, but it asks the same questions Anne does about art and love.

But Pure speculation about Jane Austen's life that actual scholars dispute. The romance plot overshadows the writing ambition in ways that might frustrate you.

Becoming Jane poster

North & South2004

Margaret Hale is fiercely intelligent and principled, navigating industrial-era England with the same sense of moral clarity Anne possesses. Richard Armitage's John Thornton is a magnificent romantic counterpart to Gilbert Blythe.

But Considerably more concerned with class conflict and economics than Anne. The Industrial Revolution setting is grittier and less picturesque than Prince Edward Island.

North & South poster

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society2018

Post-war woman writer traveling to a small island community, discovering connection and healing through literature and friendship. It shares Anne's belief that kindness and story-telling can mend people.

But The Second World War's shadow hangs over everything; the emotional register is more somber. Some may find it treacly in its sentimentality.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society poster

The Diary of Anne Frank1959

Both films are built on the belief that a young woman's interior thoughts—her ambitions, her self-awareness, her writing—matter enormously. Both ask us to listen to what she's thinking.

A completely different Anne—real, historical, documenting a girl's interior life under unimaginable circumstances. George Stevens' film treats her words with such tenderness and respect that it becomes a profound meditation on hope, adolescence, and voice.

But This is Holocaust cinema. It is devastating. There is no romance, no happy ending, and no comfort. It requires emotional preparation.

The Diary of Anne Frank poster

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Recommended by

The Decline of the American Empire, Anne of Green Gables, Return to Christmas Creek