Paradise Postponed/Titmuss Regained (1986/1991/British TV Mini-Series/Acorn Media DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Episodes: B-
Sometimes
a smart drama that is well thought out can still have its uneven moments,
especially when adapted into the television mini-series format. Rumpole
Of The Bailey creator John Mortimer is behind the books that made Paradise Postponed (1986) and its
sequel, Titmuss Regained (1991)
possible. The first was big enough a hit
to spawn the sequel, but both (with their melodrama) wanted to be the next Upstairs Downstairs. Well, not quite.
Paradise co-stars Richard Vernon, David
Threlfall, Michael Hordern, Colin Blakely, Paul Shelley, Peter Egan, Annette
Crosbie, Zoe Wanamaker and Jill Bennett (For
Your Eyes Only) in this tale of the three families: The Simcoxes, The
Fanners and The Titmusses. Politics,
plans for the future, private relationships, murder and money bump against each
other constantly in the results are slowly and even quietly going to rip lives
apart. It takes 11 hour-long shows for
this to happen, but here it comes.
Regained wants to revisit the results
years later and sports a cast that includes the return of David Threlfall, now
joined by Kristin Scott Thomas, Peter Capaldi and others in a more reasonable
three-hours that wrap up the storylines nicely without dragging it on and on
and on. The first show has good
directing by Alvin Rakoff, but the energy is not always there to keep this
interesting throughout like better mini-series, yet both are intelligent and
ambitious and I would rather have that than a set of junk projects. You should still see the first series before
the second, which is why it is smart Acorn packaged them together.
The 1.33
X 1 image was shot on film and looks good, if not great, likely because these
are older low-def transfers at a professional level. Do the film prints still exist? If so, new HD transfers need to be done so
this can come out on Blu-ray. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo is simple and shows its age, but is not too bad and a tad
better on the sequel show. Extras are text
on author Mortimer and cast filmographies.
- Nicholas Sheffo
