The Day After the Fair (1986 TV Movie) User Reviews

excellent - passion in Victorian surroundings

[richlieu · 9/10 · 30 September 1998]

Just brilliant! Hannah Gordon, that very under-rated BRILLIANT English actress gives the performance of her life, when the love story, of which she is really the creator, gets out of hand.

There is just so much fire and passion behind that cool superficial facade......

Everyone else around her, not least Anna Massey and Sammi Davis are just fantastic too.....

A Memorable Story

[Watcher-45 · 10/10 · 17 July 2009]

This is a movie I've thought about for years without knowing the title, so you might imagine how thrilled I am to finally find it. Lacking a plot summary or a way for me to add one, here it is for anyone else who may be looking:

This story - I believe it's set in the Edwardian era - is about an unhappily married woman named Edith. One day at the fair Edith's maid Anna meets a handsome barrister from London and is seduced by him. Later when she discovers she's pregnant, Edith insists that Anna write to him and let him know.

Anna being illiterate, Edith writes the letter for her. Before long Edith and the barrister are exchanging letters regularly and they fall in love. He is so taken with the person he thinks is "Anna" that he comes to marry her, and finds out too late that the Anna he has married is devoid of thought and the woman he loves is Edith.

The ending of this movie is one of the most memorable I've ever seen.

Clever Dramatisation Of Lost Victorian Masterpiece

[52helicon · 10/10 · 25 September 2005]

"On The Western Circuit" which is the source for "Day After The Fair" is an excellent adaptation of possibly the best of Thomas Hardy's 50+ short stories. While Far From The Madding Crowd and Tess, his most famous novels, have been brilliantly done...this is an enormous treat, showing Hardy's mastery of the short story. By the way, its comparison to Cyrano DE Bergerac is apt. Yet Hardy wrote "On The Western Circuit," here dramatized a full SEVEN years before Cyrano. It may well have been that Cyrano's author, Edmund Rostand, borrowed or "homaged" Hardy's story to create his classic. Lost masterpiece for the advance admirer of Victorian story telling brought to film.

a bittersweet love story

[sonreghart · 28 August 2011]

I have looked for this B.B.C. Masterpiece Theatre production for over 20 years. It is a wonderful short story by Thomas Hardy,IF ANYONE KNOWS HOW I CAN PURCHASE THIS FILM I WOULD LOVE TO FIND OUT HOW AND WHERE.

A young Barrister falls in love with a beautiful young maid at a country fair. He returns to London and begins to write to the beautiful girl. When she receives his letter she is thrilled but also in a quandary of what to do, as she can neither read or write. Her kind Mistress reads the letter for her, thus begins the sending of and receiving love letters. The film is beautifully presented and it will stay with you forever.

One of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. Exquisite!

[michelie · 28 March 2002]

If you enjoyed the movie, read the Thomas Hardy story on which it is based, "On the Western Circuit". It is in one of his book of short stories. The story is just as wonderful as the movie, and it is to the credit of the actors, script writers, etc. that they have done such a wonderful interpretation of the tale.