Confession time: I must have read Émile Zola's department store novel "Au Bonheur des Dames" over a hundred times. Its main characters, Denise Baudu and Octave Mouret, are my Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. And unlike pretty much every other books written by Zola, "Au Bonheur des Dames" has a happy ending and I just can't enough of it. "Oh! monsieur Mouret, c'est vous que j'aime!" Sorry... spoiler alert ;-)Why am I mentioning this now? Because after “Call the Midwife”, “Mr. Selfridge” and ubber popular “Downton Abbey,” PBS is premiering "The Paradise" tonight (October 6, 9PM.) And this new BBC Masterpiece Classics series is, you may have guessed it, loosely based on "Au Bonheur des Dames" ...
Main navigation
I'll always have Paris...