11 hours long TV miniseries "Brideshead Revisited", based on Evelyn Waugh's eponymous classic novel, has been one of the most pleasurable watching experiences I can think of. It lacks action or adventure but is one of the most charming, elegiac, moving, elegant, and classy films, TV or otherwise. It is also generous with delightful humorous scenes in specific English humor that can't be faked or reproduced outside of England. Both, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier contributed to these scenes as well as Nickolas Grace as Anthony Blanche, a decadent and flamboyant but sharp and observant acquaintance of both main characters, Charles Rydes and Sebastian Flyte. Anthony Andrews plays golden boy Sebastian as Dorian Grey with heart, beloved and admired by everyone but troubled, unhappy, and self-destructing because, as one of the characters insightfully observed, he is in love with his childhood and he refuses to grow up.
The production values are of the highest quality, and never for a moment I stopped enjoying the magnificent settings of such locations as Venice, Morocco, Central America, Paris, and New York as well as the majestic halls and glorious landscapes of Brideshead (Castle Howard). The most important aspect of Brideshead Revisited, is, without doubt, Evelyn Waugh's language, and Jeremy Irons, as Charles Rydes, the film protagonist, was born to narrate the pages of the beautiful prose that sounds like an exciting melody of the times passed but not faded.
While watching "Brideshead Revisited", I contemplated why this story of the class that does not exist anymore in the period of time that is long past history is still compelling and riveting. What are these people to me? Why was I running home every evening to continue watching the stories of their lives that on the surface seem uneventful and even boring? I guess the answer is in the double magic of great literature that captured the period of the fall of the Great Empire and those who disappeared with it and grand filmmaking that did not lose much while adapting it to the screen. One of the best TV series ever made, "Brideshead Revisited" deservingly belongs to the 100 Best British TV films.
The production values are of the highest quality, and never for a moment I stopped enjoying the magnificent settings of such locations as Venice, Morocco, Central America, Paris, and New York as well as the majestic halls and glorious landscapes of Brideshead (Castle Howard). The most important aspect of Brideshead Revisited, is, without doubt, Evelyn Waugh's language, and Jeremy Irons, as Charles Rydes, the film protagonist, was born to narrate the pages of the beautiful prose that sounds like an exciting melody of the times passed but not faded.
While watching "Brideshead Revisited", I contemplated why this story of the class that does not exist anymore in the period of time that is long past history is still compelling and riveting. What are these people to me? Why was I running home every evening to continue watching the stories of their lives that on the surface seem uneventful and even boring? I guess the answer is in the double magic of great literature that captured the period of the fall of the Great Empire and those who disappeared with it and grand filmmaking that did not lose much while adapting it to the screen. One of the best TV series ever made, "Brideshead Revisited" deservingly belongs to the 100 Best British TV films.