DVDs in the Works is a sneak peek at highlights in BBC Video's future schedule as well as relevant entertainment news. However, as the Scottish poet once said, "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." That's our (and Robbie Burns') way of saying that the titles discussed here may or may not eventually see the light of day, due to circumstances beyond our control.
Masterpiece’s Charles Dickens bicentennial season begins this Sunday, April 1st, with the BBC’s latest version of Great Expectations (starring Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham). Following on April 15th is an adaptation of Dicken’s last (and unfinished) novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It stars Matthew Rhys (The Lost World – 2001) as John Jasper, who to the world appears to be the respectable choir master of Rochester Cathedral in Kent, England. But Jasper has two dark secrets that are becoming less and less manageable: an obsessive desire for his nephew’s fiancée, Rosa Bud (Tamzin Merchant – The Tudors), and an addiction to laudanum.
In the title role of John’s nephew Edwin Drood is Freddie Fox (Any Human Heart), who hails from the Fox acting dynasty: son of Edward Fox and Joanna David, brother of Emilia Fox and cousin of Laurence Fox (Inspector Lewis). Also appearing are Rory Kinnear (Cranford), Julia McKenzie (Cranford, Miss Marple) and Alun Armstrong (New Tricks).
Watch the stars come out for Sport Relief: Earlier this Sunday, BBC America is giving us a window into the phenomenon that is Sport Relief, beginning at 7am ET with This is Sport Relief, hosted by Stephen Fry. A full program of Sport Relief specials will lead up to Sport Relief Goes Global from 12:30 – 5 PM ET. We’re especially looking forward to the two Sport Relief Spoofs (10am ET), in which the cream of British talent will send up Mamma Mia, Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs.
Frozen Planet continues on Discovery Sundays at 8pm ET: This week’s episode is the most frozen of all: Winter. One of the many high points is the glimpse of tiny newborn polar bear cubs.
As the Doctor Who community speculates over the announcement that Jenna-Louise Coleman will be the Doctor’s next companion, we turn our attention to Elisabeth Sladen, whose seasons on Doctor Whoas Sarah Jane Smith from 1973 to 1976 redefined our expectations for all the companions who came after.The Sarah Jane Adventures spin-off series, which followed her successful reunion with the Doctor in 2006 opposite David Tennant, delighted her long-standing fans as well as a new generation. Sadly, Elisabeth Sladen died last April while Season Five was still in production, but six of the planned episodes were completed, and subsequently aired in the UK last fall. The DVD includes three two-part stories and a memorial piece, Goodbye Bannerman Road.
Don’t forget, Frozen Planet continues this Sunday at 8 pm on Discovery in both the US and Canada.
Good news for Foyle’s War fans: The popular detective series starring Michael Kitchen is being revived for an eighth season, airing on ITV1 next year and hopefully coming to DVD soon after.
Opening this week in cinemas: Rachel Weisz (Page Eight), Tom Hiddleston (Wallander) and Simon Russell Beale (MI-5 – Vols 9 & 10) star an acclaimed new adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan. Our nine-play DVD The Terence Rattigan Collection includes the BBC’s 1994 version, which starred Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey), Colin Firth and Ian Holm.
After exploring the financial history of the world in his 2009 PBS series The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson turns his sites on Civilization: The West and the Rest. The Harvard history professor spins his economic history with a focus on six “killer apps” that propelled the western countries toward world success: competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism, and work. The result is quite provocative, amid the less savory trade-offs for such success and questions as whether the west is finally losing the edge.
As Queen Elizabeth II began her Diamond Jubilee tour of the UK today in Leicester, it’s perfect time to introduce two special DVDs in the works. The Diamond Queen is a 3-hour television profile that aired last month. Our British colleagues, who have witnessed a number of jubilees and television retrospectives over the years, were impressed by this series’ unprecedented access to the Queen, and to members of the Royal family, who speak quite candidly in interviews. The Diamond Queen premieres in Canada on CBC News this Saturday, March 10th, at 7pm ET/PT. Broadcast information for the US has not been announced.
The Queen’s Palaces is currently making the rounds of PBS stations, and an episode aired on British Columbia’s Knowledge last night. The series devotes episodes to Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and relates their fascinating history in relation to the various monarchs who hand a hand in their development. Both DVDs should be available shortly before the Jubilee celebrations, which begin Saturday, June 2nd.
If you’re already thinking of stocking provisions, Darvilles of Windsor has a special Diamond Jubilee tea blend in the works, which we will list soon. In addition to the regal Diamond Jubilee mug we brought in earlier this year, we’ve brought in a more playful mug in the inimitable Dunoon style. Also newly added to the mix is a commemorative tea towel from Ulster Weavers, a holder of the Royal Warrant.
Coming to Masterpiece Theatre on April 1st is an emotionally powerful re-examination of Great Expectations. Screenwriter Sarah Phelps (Oliver Twist-2007) has focused on the danger and cruelty in the story, and the cast rises to the challenge, especially Gillian Anderson (Bleak House) in a haunting portrayal of Miss Havisham. Douglas Booth (Christopher and his Kind, The Pillars of the Earth) became an overnight star as Pip when the miniseries aired in Great Britain. The unforgettable cast also includes: Ray Winstone as Magwitch; Shaun Dooley (South Riding) as Joe; Vanessa Kirby (The Hour) as Estella; David Suchet (Poirot) as Jaggers; and Tom Burke (State of Play, Poirot: “The Clocks”) as Bentley Drummle. The DVD has not yet been announced, but we expect it to follow soon after the broadcast.
The last time the BBC made a television series on Irish history was in 1980, fifteen years before the book How Ireland Saved Civilization was published. This time around, Fergal Keane, who hails from Cork, presents Ireland as a world player in an outward-looking (and forward-looking) history, and challenges a number of myths along the way. The image here is the earliest known map of Ireland (c. 150 AD) preserved via a medieval copy of Ptolemy’s Geographia. Contributing to the unique look of the series is Irish artist David Rooney, whose stark woodcuts illustrate 92 events in The Story of Ireland.
Next Wednesday (February 22nd), Nature on PBS will depart from its customary one-hour format to air all three parts of Ocean Giants in one night. The series offers an extraordinarily intimate look at whales and dolphins with cinematography by two top underwater cameramen, Doug Allen (Planet Earth, The Blue Planet) and Jacques Cousteau’s cameraman Didier Noirot. They’ve been following these animals for decades, and still find themselves witnessing behaviour for the first time.
The Ocean Giants DVD, which comes with a bonus Blu-ray disc of the series, will be released in the US on March 6th. The Canadian broadcaster is not yet announced, but Ocean Giants will be available in Canada following the series run.
Fan alert: Those who saw Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch trading off the roles of Doctor Frankenstein and his Monster in last year’s live feed from the National Theatre may have the opportunity to see how Miller fares in a modern version of Sherlock Holmes for CBS. We must concede that our loyalty to Sherlock made us not entirely receptive to CBS’s proposal to make a Sherlock-Holmes-in-contemporary-New-York series, but we’d certainly give Jonny Lee Miller a look-in. By the way, Frankenstein will be back by popular demand in encore feeds from the National Theatre beginning in June.
The new eight-part season of Being Human just premiered in the UK, and we North Americans don’t have very long to wait. Both BBC America and Space in Canada have set the night of Feb 25 for the Season 4 premiere. The DVD and Blu-ray will follow sometime this spring.
Sadly, Mitchell (Aidan Turner) was shot with a wolf-shaped bullet in last season’s finale, but Annie (Leonora Crichlow) and George (Russell Tovey) are back. Michael Socha also returns as the werewolf Tom, and there’s a new vampire in town, Hal (Damien Molony). Those who follow the live feeds from the National Theatre may have recently seen Molony in Travelling Light. Look for Aidan Turner this December as Kili in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
BAFTA / AbFab alert: This Sunday night at 8pm ET BBC America is airing the fabulous film awards ceremony of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. We look forward to it every year, but especially this year because Stephen Fry is returning to host the show
after several years’ absence. To top off the night, BBC America will air the second 20th Anniversary Absolutely Fabulous special at 11pm ET. It features a hilarious turn by Lindsay Duncan (The Rise and Fall of Margaret Thatcher) as the sort of legendary French film star who has grown accustomed to universal worship. Canadian broadcast information is not yet announced.
On April 17th, customers of BBC America and BBC Canada Shops will be the first to enjoy Last of the Summer Wine Vintage 1992, the next installment in the world’s longest running sitcom. Pre-order now to get the DVD as soon as it’s ready, if only to learn how Foggy, Clegg and Compo came by these extraordinary costumes.
This fifteenth season is almost halfway through the series that ran for 31 seasons between 1973 and 2010. Thanks to our quarterly release plan, we’re due to catch up to our original Vintage 1995 release before the year is through.
Last fall British audiences thrilled to the revelations of Frozen Planet. The seven-part series became such an instant classic that the BBC commissioned a special program of highlights, The Epic Journey, which was broadcast during the holidays. Frozen Planet is very much the heir to Planet Earth. Producer Alastair Fothergill decided to make the series as a direct result of the conditions he observed when the polar episode of Planet Earth was being filmed. Having produced Life in the Freezer a decade earlier, he was uniquely placed to see how much Antarctica had changed between the two series shoots.
Much of the wonder of Frozen Planet lies in the sheer scale of its icy, alien landscapes, as seen in the photo above of Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It summons up visions not imagined since reading H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness in our youth. Still, the heart of a BBC nature series is in the intimacies of animal behavior, such as this glimpse into the morality of penguins shown below.
Frozen Planet will premiere on March 18th on Discovery in the US, and on Discovery World HD in Canada. The DVD and Blu-ray will follow the series finale in April. Extras include video diaries, behind the scenes, isolated music score option, a science featurette and the highlight program, Frozen: Planet: The Epic Journey.
Photo Credit: Laurence Cendrowicz © BBC 2012
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Photo © Luis Quintas/Naturepl
