‘Anne of Green Gables’: Good Family Fare for Thanksgiving

Full of good cheer, warmth, and Martin Sheen’s fabulously full head of hair, the new PBS version of Anne of Green Gables, airing on Thanksgiving, is a TV alternative to football after you’ve been sated by turkey and all the fixings. This Canadian production stars Ella Ballentine as the lucky orphan who is taken in by aging siblings Marilla (Sara Botsford) and Matthew Cuthbert (Sheen). This production of Anne — whose full title is L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, presumably to bestow an added emphasis of fidelity to the Lucy Maud Montgomery source books — was filmed in Canada, as the story is set on windswept, rural Prince Edward Island.