Sure it’s about how and when the British costume drama began, with The Adventures of Robin Hood funded by Lord Lew Grade, and nearly wiping out ITV’s entire budget for the year, and the dramas that have emerged since, such as I, Claudius, and Moll Flanders, and Brideshead Revisited, but it’s a primer for those who have either never seen any British costume dramas and are curious about what they’re all about, or those who have read the books upon which these costume dramas are based and want to know a little bit more before they decide if they want to see them themselves. Noble purposes, but the end of every episodes leaves one feeling short-shrifted. Would it have been such an inconvenience to linger more on that history in the first episode? Keira Knightley, Sean Bean, Helen Mirren, and other either soon-to-be stars or already-major stars are covered in the second episode about stars of these dramas, but what about consideration for John Hurt? His Caligula is one of the greatest performances in television history, as tops as anything Helen Mirren has done, and yet he’s only here in a few interviews. Oh what it would have been to learn more about how he became Caligula, at least in this context, since Acorn Media’s I Claudius Criterion-level package does the trick. But even so, as epic as these costume dramas are in their story and scope, this series should have stretched out a little more, slowly drinking in this history instead of gulping it.
However, even with such objections, I admit wholeheartedly that The Story of the Costume Drama does its job. I know so many of these clips, and 2005’s Bleak House starring Gillian Anderson holds a special place in my DVD collection, as it is what set me on reading more Dickens than just Oliver Twist, as it was when I was a kid. The chief purpose of this series is to make people want to see these dramas. That’s all. And it works spectacularly well because alongside notes jotted down for this review are titles that I must see one day that would be good for an idle Saturday afternoon in the future, to go to the library and pluck these titles off the shelves, or put them on hold and then pick them up. It also does its job in the literature department, because the clips shown of Moll Flanders, and Alex Kingston’s description of her character, makes me want to read the book. It may very well have the same effect if it’s shown in any college courses. I hope it does.
The only extra on this two-disc DVD set is a photo gallery with the series’ theme music running behind it, with photos from Adventures of Robin Hood, Brideshead Revisited, Dr. Zhivago, Emma, Catherine Cookson’s The Fifteen Streets, Hard Times, Horatio Hornblower, The Jewel in the Crown, and more. If you want to look at the photos longer than the gallery allows, you must hit the pause button.
The Story of the Costume Drama also covers war dramas, romances, and the shooting locations of these various dramas. It does its job, but I hope there’s some ambitious soul out there diligently researching more of the history of the costume drama to either make a very nice coffee table book, or at least a book that goes more deeply into the production of these dramas. There’s a lot more history to mine.
