I love this movie so much

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

In this new millennium, popular culture has refashioned the topic of "England between the wars" into a study of modern politics, paradoxically coupled with a whitewashing of much of the era's class relations and sensibilities. "Look," it seems to say, "the characters and their passions are just like us; only the costumes have changed." Stellar casting aside, this was more or less what I had expected of Brideshead. How delightfully wrong I was: There is not a trace of soapy melodrama on display here; no obsession with servant quarters' gossip. This is deep, thoughtful, existentialist reflecting and reminiscing on coming of age, on friendship, love including same-sex love, on marriage and family, on religious faith and how often its outward guises may belie a person's dark side. As it happened, I watched the DVD while grieving the sudden passing of my closest friend. I found myself weeping during some scenes, shuddering with delight at others.

This 1981 adaptation of one of the finest 20th century novels is as perfect as any adaptation for television could ever be. Returning to it after some years, what is so moving and so eloquently conveyed is the wonderful, poetic and innocent early recall of Charles's romance with Oxford and Sebastian, and the gathering clouds of winter which Waugh tells us close around Sebastian's heart, as his mother's destructive piety and possessiveness destroy him, while Charles is unwittingly caught by her power. We see many Jungian archetypes at play. Also, revisiting it, one sees the homosexuality much more, so delicately described by Waugh merely by hints, yet which he says was high on the list of mortal "sins" between the two young men. Platonic? No, but the subtlety is what writers of Waugh's standing sought - it was after all based on an affair in his own life.Jeremy Irons is superb, conveying with great subtlety and often few words the poetry, the sadness, the regret, the loss of innocence, while Anthony Andrews is equally superb, haughty, childlike, trusting yet betrayed, aristocratic. Claire Bloom as Lady Marchmain is an ice queen of still, too controlled beauty, destroying all with her Catholic obsession, unable to see her own shadow. Gielgud - what can one say except superb? Anthony Blanche is deliciously camp and conveys the centrality to those early days that Waugh describes, and of course Olivier is unsurpassed, and Diana Quick beautiful and as tormented by her faith as was her mother. To watch this after the sorry movie version (just two hours against about twelve!) is a real lesson in how to adapt a great novel. One of thee truly great TV classics.

Brideshead Revisited, by Arthur Evelyn Waugh, is one of the greatest and possibly luckiest books on the planet today. A truly heart-wrenching story of a decaying, idyllic society, it is fortunate enough to have this truly excellent TV Series to accompany it. I won't spoil it as it is truly a lovely, subtle narrative, but the actors (you won't get a much better cast anywhere else) portray the characters brilliantly. From Jeremy Irons' slightly unsure Charles Ryder (his slow, even narration is superb) to the hugely likable, but sadly doomed, Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte. Castle Howard, as you will come to realise, is the perfect Brideshead for the series is a character in itself in the series as it seems to change with the general moods of the characters. All in all, this is a truly wonderful series that stays very true to the book. The sad thing is that there won't be many, if any, series like this in the future.

It is hard for the younger viewer, like me, to appreciate the success of Brideshead Revisited. It is from a time when, in Britain, there were only three channels in Britain. Moreover, record players had not become widely available, and things were not often repeated. All this meant that the viewer had to tune in at the appointed time, or miss out. And in Brideshead's case most of Britain, from all sections of society, tuned in en masse, and it has been remarked that even dowager duchesses made sure to tune in, very apt for a series with a subject like Brideshead.Coming to see such a landmark of British Television over months on an ad hoc basis on DVD, as it spans over 600 minutes, did not detract from my own appreciation of the series. My jaw dropped at its expense and ambition, being an almost-complete filming of the famed wartime novel by Waugh, in the light of other TV productions from the late 1970's and early 1980's, with their cardboard sets and stagy (not to mention stodgy) direction.Charles Ryder is a single child from a small conservative, Anglican middle class family, consisting only of himself and his oddball father, the elder Ryder. Charles meets Lord Sebastian Flyte at Oxford in the late 1920's. Ryder, a serious-headed student, is seduced by Sebastian's louche, jazz age, unorthodoxly-catholic life, and becomes his close friend and lover. Sebastian gives him an entry into the higher echelons of English society and Ryder becomes closely involved over the next decade with the Flyte family, consisting of Sebastian's proper but thick older brother, Lord Bridy, and his two sisters, Julia and Cordelia, and their separated parents, the distant Lord Marchmain and the nearer Lady Marchmain. She is observant and graceful, yet distant in her own, more emotional, way.The quality of the characterisation is astounding and mirrored by the high-class acting. In amidst wonderful performances by the stellar cast (as well as younger actors such as Diana Quick, Phoebe Nicholls, Nickolas Grace, Simon Jones and Anthony Andrews) Jeremy Irons, in the central role, evinces a wonderful subtlety, perfectly suited to the restrained but passionate Ryder, and also narrates superbly, in character, the restrained but passionate story.Brideshead Revisited has a fey, conservative reputation that it does not wholly deserve. It is true that this TV adaptation does not correct the novel's middle class obsequiousness in its view of the decline of the English aristocracy, and at times it is too reserved in its view of the sexual relationship between Charles and Sebastian, which seems coy and a little elusive. But critics mistake its reserve. There is real depth in Brideshead Revisited- rather like large tectonic plates moving quietly but momentously beneath the surface- concerning issues like religion, sexuality and repression, alcoholism, the decline of the English aristocracy and the rise of the middle class, as well as the dehumanisation of war.It must be remembered that Ryder's journey into the upper echelons of English society via the Brideshead family- engaging and original in itself- is also a passionate and convincing allegory of the higher classes of English society between the two twentieth century world wars. Brideshead Revisited may owe a lot of this, and its general richness, to the fact that it is basically a filmed novel, but it has utilised the novel so well and filmed it with great care and dedication. It is for this reason that Brideshead Revisited arguably deserves its place at the top of British TV Adaptations.