Brideshead Revisited
Click to viewToday the Times had an article on the popularity of "Downton Abbey" and how it's driving viewers into bookstores looking for books on the Edwardian era and the British aristocracy. I have tried watching it a couple of times, but couldn't get into it. One reason I think is I don't need it, because I've already had my Downton Abbey exactly 30 years ago, when in the winter of 1982 PBS showed the Jeremy Irons -Anthony Andrews "Brideshead Revisited" miniseries on American TV for the first time. Coincidentally, that semester I was taking in college a course on 18th and 19th century British history. These two events happening at the same time had a profound effect on me and made me an Anglophile and a scholar of English history. It especially increased my interest in the British aristocracy and their country houses. I was less interested in Waugh's religious theme, and did not like how in the end Charles converts to Catholicism, but that was a minor quibble. Everybody who saw "Brideshead" then knew they were seeing one of the greatest TV programs in history. I have been looking at it recently on Youtube over and over and can't stop watching it. So, who needs "Downton Abbey"? After "Brideshead Revisited", every other British program since, no matter how well made, looks like a pale imitation.