Rosamunde Pilcher died in 2019 at the age of 94. Her love stories have been regularly shown on screens for over 25 years. But why are the films so successful?
They are love stories with small obstacles, paired with a dreamlike landscape and a happy ending at the end. For many, the films based on books by Rosamunde Pilcher are an escape into another world, into an ideal world.
In 1993, the first Pilcher film, “Sturmische Begegnung,” was broadcast on ZDF. After almost 30 years, the bestselling author’s “heart-warming cinema” is still in demand. Michael Smeaton has produced the films since the beginning. “I believe that the greater the uncertainty in the world becomes and the more political ghosts that we thought we had long since chased away continue to exist, the more there is a desire for a counterpole,” he explained a few weeks ago the secret of the success of the Rosamunde Pilcher films.
Michael Smeaton visited her in Dundee, Scotland, on her 94th birthday in September. He reported that she was in good shape. She had a phenomenal memory. She was relatively unknown in England. She had already stopped writing by then. But that didn’t matter. There was enough material.
According to Smeaton, before Pilcher published her first two major novels, the writer wrote a huge number of short stories for women’s magazines. She then meticulously summarized these stories in a short form, each with a few sentences about the content, in a little black book, which is now safely stored in a safe.
It’s a bit like oil: this little treasure is not infinite, but it will easily last for many years. “There will still be Pilcher films when she is no longer here,” said Smeaton at the time. Around five or six heartbreak productions are filmed each year on England’s southwest coast near Cornwall.
The method of transplanting German actors into beautiful landscapes outside the country’s borders has not only proven successful in the case of Pilcher. Other contributions to ZDF’s “Herzkino” are now also being produced in this way, such as the Inga Lindström series in Sweden.
The new Pilcher season on ZDF starts on October 6, 2024 at 8:15 p.m. with the broadcast of “In Love with a Butler”. In the leading roles: the Berlin actress Susan Hoecke and her Austrian colleague Ferdinand Seebacher. Anne, played by Hoecke, fights alone for her small fruit and vegetable farm in Cornwall after her husband left her for his lover. To help Anne, her aristocratic aunt sends her butler John, played by Seebacher, to the farm for six weeks.
Rosamunde Pilcher died in 2019 at the age of 94.
