I was quite surprised to find this series in IMDb - I thought it was all but forgotten. Hurrah for the internet!
This series was the first in a set of great Masterpiece Theatre presentations. This is the set in chronological order (as I remember them): Flickers, Brideshead Revisited, Love in A Cold Climate, To Serve Them All My Days.
Flickers has distinction, not just because it was the first of the set, but also because it depicted a period just outside of the decadent two decades that existed between the wars. (I am a big fan of the twenties and thirties, and also of authors such as Wodehouse, E.F. Benson and Waugh, but I will be the first to say that the whole Lovely Wonderful Tortured Decadent Lost Generation thing has been done to death.)
The world depicted in Flickers - the "movie" industry of the early 20th century - is gritty, wild, bold and fresh. The characters are not nobles leading charmed lives or la-de-da middle-class prototypes working on their intellectual integrity, but working people. All the more interesting is the fact that the characters work in the embryonic industry, before concepts such as "film", "artistes" and "auteur" had popped into anyones head.
The series exploits, and squeezes some amazing esoterica and unique humor from, the historical detail of the period. And the cast is fantastic - real characters using their craft to depict real characters, not blank and blandly-pretty Actors engaging in the Method to evoke the essence....well, you get the idea.
I first saw this series the same year I discovered the New Wave, and I think this was very fitting; in terms of spirit and style, Flickers had more in common with the punky, jagged and recklessly-original late-seventies that with the too-cool-for-school eighties.