Television series
Anne of Green Gables
Other titles called Anne of Green Gables: the 1934 film.
This is the gold standard adaptation: Megan Follows as the red-haired, silver-tongued orphan who talks her way into the hearts of two elderly siblings and then all of Prince Edward Island. Gorgeous, unhurried, emotionally exact — a coming-of-age story that trusts a child's imagination as much as her heartbreak. Family viewing at its most quietly devastating.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love a gentle, unhurried coming-of-age story where the pleasure lies in a talkative heroine's imagination and the rural island scenery.
Skip it if your patience runs thin with sentimentality, since the mood is earnest and sweet and the emotional beats are delivered without much irony.
What it asks of you: Settle in for long stretches of talk, slow domestic scenes and a leisurely pace, plus patience for a child's rambling inner world and her many tangents.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Road to Avonlea1990
The actual continuation of this world, widening out into the village and its later generations — if you want more time here with the same warmth and craft, this is it.
But Anne herself barely appears; it's more ensemble village drama, so if you came purely for her voice, you may miss it.
Little Women2019
Another fiercely imaginative heroine wrestling with poverty, ambition and sisterhood, told with the same conviction that a girl's inner life is worth the whole runtime.
But Greta Gerwig's fractured, time-hopping structure is a deliberate swerve from Anne's gentleness — it demands more attention than comfort viewing usually asks for.
Pride and Prejudice
The same unhurried, novel-faithful pacing, and the same pleasure in watching a sharp, funny woman spar her way toward the people who actually deserve her.
But It's adult romance rather than childhood wonder — the stakes are marriage and money, not orphanhood and belonging.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Anne of Green Gables
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Anne of Green Gables1985
It's the same book, filtered through two future Studio Ghibli founders who saw in Anne's imagination the very thing they'd later build entire films around — a rich inner life as its own kind of heroism. Watching it, you're watching Ghibli's DNA form, decades early, inside someone else's story.
Directed by a young Isao Takahata with Hayao Miyazaki on layouts, this fifty-episode anime adapts the same novel with startling patience — full of Prince Edward Island light, Anne's daydreams rendered as actual reverie, small gestures given room to breathe.
But Fifty episodes of slow, gentle animation is a big ask, and the visual style is unmistakably late-1970s TV anime, not glossy modern fare.
People
Cast
Recommended by
A Little Princess, The Railway Children, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Little Women, Road to Avonlea, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, Danny the Champion of the World, Because of Winn-Dixie, Christy, My Side of the Mountain, Pollyanna, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Flicka, The Adventures of the Wilderness Family, Burning an Illusion, The Party, Prancer, Curly Top, My Antonia, Little Women, Punky Brewster, Heidi, Love Thy Neighbour, The Little Princess, Sarah, Plain and Tall, Pollyanna, Back to the Secret Garden, The Swiss Family Robinson, Rascal, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams