Beautiful Barchester
A whole weekend with absolutely nothing on television that I wanted to watch. So I reached for the DVDs and picked The Barchester Chronicles. Scripted by Alan Plater with an all-star cast and beautiful choral theme music, it has to be one of the best TV drama series ever made. It also launched Alan Rickman with his bravura performance as Obadiah Slope. Even the best need a lucky break and this was surely his. It was first shown in 1982! I can hardly believe how young I was when I first saw it and, gulp, that means I’ve had a thing about Alan Rickman for nearly thirty years.
I’ve now watched all but two episodes (bliss) and of course it made me want to read the books again. I have them in nice Folio editions but for convenient bedtime reading I downloaded The Warden (free) to the Kindle and enjoyed. Sheer reading pleasure from page one.
