Adapted from the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, the six-part BBC miniseries Sunset Song was set in Kinraddie, a farming village in Kincardineshire, Scotland, in the early years of the 20th century. The story focused on Chris Guthrie (Vivien Heilbron), the teenaged daughter of autocratic and manipulative farmer John Guthrie (Andrew Keir). Although her dreams of a college education and a happy marriage were ultimately dashed, Chris managed to weather her many ordeals and emerge comparatively triumphant. Meanwhile, her neighbors expressed a wide variety of reactions and emotions to the ever-changing world outside their own, most memorably when WWI was declared. First telecast in England in 1971, Sunset Song was shown as part of the American public-TV anthology series Masterpiece Theatre beginning April 25, 1976.
by Hal Erickson
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