A BBC costume drama that focuses in on author Jane Austen as she heads towards her 40s, Miss Austen Regrets is a fine piece of television, grounded by a terrific performance from Olivia Williams (best remembered still for her supporting role in The Sixth Sense). Miss Austen Regrets finds the title character at a point where her writing career has already proved to be a ...
Screenwriter Andrew Davies describes Tipping the Velvet, his adaptation of Sarah Waters's acclaimed novel of lesbian love, betrayal and redemption in Victorian England, as "Pride and Prejudice with dirty bits". This three-part BBC production chronicles with relish the story of Nan Astley (Rachael Stirling, the ravishing image of her mother, Diana Rigg), barely 18, and certain that ...
Daft, summer-schedule-filling fun from the BBC, Bonekickers is a muddled drama series that brings a team of people together to try and solve some ancient mysteries with a bit of modern know-how. Naturally, the team have their conflicts along the way, and naturally there are twists and turns as they go about their work. But not much that you won?t see coming. For it doesn?t take long ...
A literary academic whose novels met with widespread commercial acclaim, the work of Iris Murdoch has a depth and elusiveness difficult to capture on screen. So for Iris, his first film as a director, Richard Eyre avoids the problematic novels and instead alternates the two phases of Murdoch's life as related by her widower John Bayley in his books Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for ...
The Gathering Storm is a fictionalised portrayal of Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine during their wilderness years of the 1930s. It deservedly won numerous awards, including an Emmy, BAFTA and Golden Globe in recognition of Albert Finney's wonderful central performance. Equally deserving were those for all aspects of the production design: period wardrobe, set dressing and use of ...