Gone with the Wind is a sprawling mosaic of a picture, one of the best-loved and most successful in movie history, but also one of the most frustrating. Wonderfully epic in scope, the decline and fall of the antebellum South as seen through the eyes of feisty, independent and wilful heroine Scarlett O'Hara makes the first half of the picture an absolutely riveting spectacle. From the ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil, Evelyn Keyes
Directed By: George Cukor, Sam Wood, Victor Fleming

Jane Austen goes Gothic in this darkly dramatic rendering of her Northanger Abbey, a novel that wasn't published until after her early and sudden death. Austen pokes fun at her peers in this story, in which her heroine, Catherine Morland (Katharine Schlesinger), is hopelessly addicted to macabre romance novels that wreak havoc on her imagination. She comes from a large, but loving family, ...

Manufacturer: BBC Video
Starring: Katherine Schlesinger, Peter Firth, Googie Withers, Robert Hardy, Geoffrey Chater
Directed By: Giles Foster

Manufacturer: Granada Media
Starring: Robson Green, Bernard Hill

Manufacturer: 2 Entertain Video
Starring: Doran Godwin, John Carson, Donald Eccles, Constance Chapman, Ellen Dryden

Most people didn't mind Gwyneth Paltrow's English accent in this charming, 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's novel (which also inspired Clueless). But even if it doesn't sound quite right to you, there are plenty of authentic and wonderful Brit thespians in this film by screenwriter-turned-director Douglas McGrath (co-author of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway), including Juliet ...

Manufacturer: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, James Cosmo, Greta Scacchi, Alan Cumming, Denys Hawthorne
Directed By: Douglas McGrath

A truly epic saga of dynastic conflict at the heart of Imperial Rome, I Claudius was the landmark BBC drama series of the 1970s. Originally transmitted as 13 50-minute episodes, it is now available as two double video packs. After chronicling the foundations of the British Empire in Elizabeth R (1971), the BBC chose to dramatise the human face of ancient Rome as interpreted by Robert ...

Manufacturer: 2 Entertain Video
Starring: Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, George Baker

Manufacturer: 2 Entertain Video
Starring: Timothy Dalton, Zelah Clarke, Alan Cox, Gemma Walker, Katharine Irwin

Herbert Wise, who had previously directed part of Elizabeth R (1971), and who would helm the BBC Television Shakespeare Julius Caesar (1979), concludes his study of the ruthless conflicts of Rome's First Family. Events become increasingly frenzied as Caligula bloodily slaughters his way to power, making a senator of his favourite horse along the way. Fresh from The Naked Civil ...

Manufacturer: 2 Entertain Video
Starring: Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, George Baker

On one level, the BBC's 1981 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is a classic example of old-fashioned Sunday teatime drama. In Elinor Dashwood, thanks to Irene Richard's subtle performance, it has one of Jane Austen's most appealing heroines: a troubled young woman who outwardly "manages" her thoughts but must come to terms with a world that is not as black and white as she would have it. ...

Manufacturer: 2 Entertain Video
Starring: Irene Richard, Tracey Childs, Bosco Hogan, Robert Swann, Annie Leon

In 1983, the BBC made this 261-minute mini-series from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park. Austen explores the well-trodden theme of class distinction and the triumph of love, but Fanny Price (Sylvestra Le Touzel) is an original Austen creation. Fanny, from a large and poor family, is taken into the home of her wealthy uncle and aunt, the stoic Sir Thomas Bertram (Bernard Hepton) and the ...

Manufacturer: 2 Entertain Video
Starring: Anna Massey, Bernard Hepton, Angela Pleasence, Nicholas Farrell, Sylvestra Le Touzel
Directed By: David Giles