Amazon Prime's "The Pursuit of Love" is a Hilarious Summer Treat

Amazon Prime’s three-part series The Pursuit of Love may cover the same time period as Downton Abbey but the similarities between the two period dramas end right there. This is a fast-moving, funny, rude, sexy story about eccentric aristocrats behaving badly, which takes you by surprise with an emotional punch here and there.

It’s a touching portrayal of female friendship against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, the political upheavals of 1930s Britain, and World War II. Nancy Mitford’s autobiographical novel The Pursuit of Love is revered now for being an amusing snapshot of its time and class, but in 1945 it was read, correctly, as sharp satire.

Director-writer Emily Mortimer (who also appears in the series as The Bolter—more on her later) takes her interpretation a step further, surprising the viewer with tempting cultural references. The joyfully anachronistic soundtrack is in the tradition we now expect since Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006). Linda Radlett (Lily James), a kept woman in Paris, dressed to the nines, struts her way down a street, laden with flowers and expensive-looking shopping bags—surely it can’t be a Pretty Woman tribute? Subverting another tradition of historical drama TV, the interiors of houses are shabby or dull, and the clothes (other than Linda’s stunning Paris couture) are mostly unflattering. The cast throws themselves into their roles with abandon and it’s hugely enjoyable.