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| Dallas |
Dallas
is an American equivalent to those British mini-series about
historical chapters in that country's royal monarchy. Full
of family in-fighting, political intrigue crossed with personal
triumph or disappointment, and plenty of sensational infidelities
and betrayals, Dallas is a captivating story of a wealthy
oil family's power and travails. It is also uniquely fun and
daringly absurd, albeit with a straight face; this hugely
successful, primetime soap opera began in the late 1970s and
ran 14 seasons in all, built on a handful of primary relationships
that stretch credulity but never descend into self-parody.
An American series that was hugely popular in the UK and indeed
around the world.
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25
Years of Dallas: The Complete Story of the World's Favourite
Prime Time Soap |
| Danger
UXB |
It
is the autumn of 1940. The Great Blitz has taken London by
surprise, and hundreds of civilians have been killed, and
thousands more made homeless. Brian Ash (Anthony Andrews),
a young Royal Engineer Officer, finds himself posted to a
Bomb Disposal Company hastily assembled to combat a new and
terrible menace - the hundreds of unexploded bombs (UXBs)
which are coming close to paralysing the whole city.
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| Forsyte
Saga |
The
Forsyte Saga was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon
that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in
1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels
and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise
than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed.
While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high
art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater,
sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera,
and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values
that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome.
Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters--perhaps to
an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies
for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted
blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make
them recognizably human.
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The
Forsyte Saga: The Official Companion |
| I,
Claudius |
A
truly epic saga of dynastic conflict at the heart of Imperial
Rome, I Claudius was the landmark BBC drama series of the
1970s. Originally transmitted as 13 50-minute episodes, the
series dramatises the human face of ancient Rome as interpreted
by Robert Graves in his two enormously complex novels, I,
Claudius and Claudius The God. Derek Jacobi gives one of the
greatest television performances ever as Claudius, the appalled
chronicler of the decadence, corruption, intrigue and carnage
which comes with the absolute power of his ruling family.
Augustus (Brian Blessed) is Emperor and Livia (Sian Phillips)
his scheming, ambitious wife, Claudius's aunt. By virtue of
his stammer and uncontrollable twitches, Claudius passes for
a fool, thus escaping the poisonous machinations of Livia,
all the while recording the comings and goings of the Imperial
household.
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"I,
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| Onedin
Line |
James
Onedin marries Anne Webster in order to get his hands on a
ship. However the marriage turns out to be one of true love.
James is ruthless in his attempt to get a shipping line started
in Liverpool of the 1860s.
The show's combination of boardroom antics and exciting seafaring
action had Sunday evening audiences hooked and contained some
excellent location work and a memorable musical score. British
costume drama at its best.
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| Pennies
from Heaven by Dennis Potter |
Dennis
Potter's astonishing six-part mini series Pennies from Heaven
remains one of the edgiest, most audacious things ever conceived
for television. The story tells of one Arthur Parker (Bob
Hoskins), a sheet-music salesman in 1930s England. Beaten
down by economic hard times and the sexual indifference of
his proper wife (Gemma Craven), Arthur cannot understand why
his life can't be like the beautiful songs he loves. On a
sales trip through the Forest of Dean, he meets a virginal
rural woman (Cheryl Campbell) he suspects may be his ideal
woman. Ruination follows. Punctuating virtually every scene
is a vintage pop song--lip-synched and sometimes danced out
by the characters. This startling innovation makes the contrast
between Arthur's brutish life and his bourgeois dreams even
more dramatic.
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| Poldark |
Poldark
is one of the most successful British television dramas of
all time. As a costume drama, scheduled for early evening
family viewing, Poldark was not unusual, but its exterior
sequences, cast and immense popularity have made it ultimately
memorable. The first episode, opening to Ross Poldark's ride
across the Cornish landscape on his return from the American
War of Independence, was seen by an audience of five million
(soon to rise to an average of 15 million).
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| Roots |
Based
on Alex Haley's bestseller, the 1977 TV mini-series Roots
told the harrowing story of one man's ancestors, commencing
with African warrior Kunta Kinte, captured, transported to
America, stripped of his dignity, his rights, and even his
name. He tries but fails to escape before accepting he can
never return to Africa. He marries and bears a daughter, Kizzy,
who is callously sold, then raped by her new "master".
However, her son, Chicken George, a resourceful dab hand with
gamecocks, lives long enough to see his own children attain
a liberty of sorts following the Civil War.
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"Roots" by Alex Haley |
| Singing
Detective by Dennis Potter |
The
late Dennis Potter was a master at mining the popular songs
of the 1930s and '40s for dramatic effect, but he never did
it better than in The Singing Detective. The inestimable Michael
Gambon plays a mystery writer named Philip E Marlow, who is
suffering a torturous bout of psoriatic arthritis in hospital,
where he is a victim of both his disease and the National
Health Service. Unable to move without pain, he escapes into
his imagination, plotting out a murder tale in which he is
both a big-band singer and a private eye. But Potter and director
Jon Amiel also mix in flashbacks of Marlow's youth and his
unhappy marriage to explain how the real Marlow reached this
sorry pass.
The TV series comprises six one-hour episodes.
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| Sopranos |
Writer-producer-director
David Chase's extraordinary television seriesThe Sopranos
is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact
strikes closer to home. This ambitious TV series chronicles
a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief.
And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity
posed by heading twin families, his collegiate mob clan and
his own nouveau-riche brood.
Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's
Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane
intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James
Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive,
exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly
convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic
comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team
of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes,
not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates"
make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey
locations where the episodes were filmed.
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The
Sopranos: Peppers & Eggs (Music From the HBO Original Series) |
Book |
The
Sopranos and Philosophy: I Kill Therefore I Am |
| Survivors |
When
a genetically engineered virus kills ninety-five percent of
the world's population, the survivors must rebuild humanity
in the face of overwhelming odds. "Survivors" is
a study of man vs. nature and man vs. man in an attempt to
reclaim an unrelenting world.
This is classic BBC drama from the 70s.
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| Waltons |
The
Walton's near 10-year run grew out of the popular, 1971 made-for-TV
movie The Homecoming, which was derived from a Depression-era,
rustic setting ("Walton's Mountain"). Something
about this seminal story of family values, rugged independence,
and big dreams amidst a hardscrabble existence captured the
hearts of American audiences, many of whom personally recalled
severe economic adversity in the 1930s.
The episodes, still delightful and touching, strong on production
values and unusually tight and polished for primetime drama,
tended to focus on themes of self-sacrifice and heroic effort
when the going got tough.
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