Have any of you found Escape recently into old BBC Miniseries?

[KoKo]

I think of all the great Jane Auston, Dickens and the Agatha Christie and P.D.James and others who provided the language for the great miniseries of the 20th Century on PBS.

I'm finding that anything about Dickens or World War's I and II are interesting me. I love the drama...it gets me out of all the newspaper/online political reading I do and gives me a good view on how folks might have "coped" during times of terrible stress. I find that seeing "fictional or biographical accounts" of people "COPING" helps me sleep at night without "nightmares of Bush and his RW Agenda and the deaths over LIEs in OUR NAME...with OUR Tax Money in Iraq, plus his other assaults on all sane "knowns" that we deal with every day.

I'm too tired after work and so much reading to get into too many political books these days...(even though I have a stack of all the progressive one's I've bought to support)...so, I go with the "visuals of the stuff from our past...some of which I'd seen but was too young to appreciate, and put on the "back burner," as "food for thought," or interesting for another time in the future. Somehow watching a big miniseries production is easier for me to deal with than to have to read these days.. maybe it's that I like the characters and dialog fleshed out for me in "living color." :D

Any have any old BBC/PBS Miniseries that you remember that you've watched recently that comforted or gave you a new insight into the trials of the times we live in?

Recommendations? :shrug:

[LiviaOlivia]

1. Try 'Lost Empires'

From Granada TV(not BBC) with Colin Firth and Laurence Olivier but John Castle is fantastic. Castle played the middle son, Jeffrey, in 'The Lion In The Winter.' On DVD.

It's a pre-WWI story about actors.

[KoKo]

5. Thanks...missed that one. Have you seen "Year in Provence?" It's

good escape about a couple who buy a place in France and try to grow grapes. It's a little more for older DU'ers, though. But the scenery and interaction with their neighbors is fun and and there's a little politics in there.

[KoKo]

2. BTW...this is a good one if you can find it...... Nice for our times....

coping...in case this thread just goes off to archives. :D

Fortunes of War" ---Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson Excellent!

All you miniseries/BBC FANS and DU'ers will love this one. I found it in a rock bottom clearance sale at Blockbuster Video this weekend and am hooked. Find that the TV is lacking in what I want to see that will give me some "story line" with a little history that even if it isn't perfect gives me some connection to the past and how others have dealt with what we are dealing with here in America as we do the prelude to Fascist Control. What I love about this is that there is a "whore media" faction element in the movie that's amazingly similar to today, and Thompson plays a "realist" about what she's confronting and Branagh portrays the "revolutionary" with a heart as they both go through their adventure in the Balkans with fascism and Hitler's Invasion.

................................................................

Here's the deal about it from Amazon:
FORTUNES OF WAR:Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
"Wherever we are, that will always be the center of things." So professor Guy Pringle reassures his new wife, Harriet. Unfortunately, where they are is Bucharest in 1939, with the Nazis gathering on the border, and fascism casting longer, darker shadows. Thus begins this epic 1987 miniseries based on Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant trilogies that was originally broadcast in the United States on Masterpiece Theatre. For most Americans, it was an auspicious first look at England's glamorous former First Thespian couple, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, who, as one character notes of Harriet, "lightens the darkness."


Fortunes of War suggests what Casablanca might have been like had it followed Victor and Ilsa instead of Rick, who famously didn't want to stick his neck out for anybody. Not Guy. "I want to do something more dramatic than lecturing," he proclaims. "It is our duty to shine a little light to hope someone notices." His activities are enough to put him on a Nazi death list, forcing Guy and Harriet to Greece and Egypt. "It isn't a lark," Guy tells Harriet early on, "but it is an adventure." Fortunes of War is populated by colorful characters, most notably the pitiable and decidedly untrustworthy Prince Yakimov (Ronald Pickup), and the dashing young soldier Simon Boulderstone (Rupert Graves of The Forsythe Saga and A Room with a View). There is plenty of intrigue, betrayals, domestic melodrama, and emotional separations and reunions to propel this nearly seven-hour production to its powerful conclusion. Readers of Manning's books and Branagh and Thompson fans will find the release of War good fortune indeed. --Donald Liebenson

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:EIjb6NQ2FAoJ:www.a...

[Bigmack]

3. "Darling Buds of May"..

It's in DVD form.. a whole set with about 20 episodes.

Sweet, quirky early 90's story about a British family. Old-fashioned and fun.

And that's just from me... my wife loved it too. I usually watch shows like Shield and Deadwood and Wire. You have a point... we need Escape.

PS Catherine Zeta Jones plays the young daughter in DB of M.

[KoKo]

4. Thanks....I've thought of finding that one. See it in the Catalogs but

worried it might be a "dud." I'll check it out!

[KoKo]

6. "Reilly Ace of Spies" is also a good old BBC that might be timely.

This Amazon sells old copies cheap.