Lord Peter Wimsey - The Complete Collection

Rating:
Summary: Definitive British detective series
Review: Finally, finally, the full set of this series is on DVD. (Individual titles have been trickling onto the market for years.) These engrossing, spirited productions are the major detective-fiction product from a distinct period and style of British productions that gave the world some enduring classics: Upstairs Downstairs, its sequel The Duchess of Duke Street, Poldark, Danger: UXB, and of course (by informal consensus the best TV series ever made), All Creatures Great and Small. These 1970s productions share a look and feel that is quickly recognizable (with videotaped interior and filmed outdoor scenes, and a pool of outstanding actors, in the British tradition, many of them famous in higher-budget theatrical films also). They all aired in the US when they were new and occasionally later, and captivated audiences, who have looked eagerly for them since. (And who were, therefore, all the more disappointed with a later, 1990s re-make of some of Sayers's Wimsey stories, slick but without the heart and energy of this 1970s classic series with Ian Carmichael.) The original stories by Sayers are themselves very entertaining; she was one of the most intellectual, and certainly the most hard-working, of the British detective-fiction writers who flourished between the wars. (One of her stories turns on the gender of a definite article in French; another, relying on details of architecture, sent her studying the subject for six months so that she would know what she was talking about -- modern best-seller writers, please note.) Her fondness for and knowledge of the Church of England informs a number of the dramatizations, especially The Nine Tailors, thought by many people (including me) to be best of them -- certainly its plot is a lollapalooza. But they are all very good.

Rating:
Summary: Definitive British detective series
Review: Finally, finally, the full set of this series is on DVD. (Individual titles have been trickling onto the market for years.) These engrossing, spirited productions are the major detective-fiction product from a distinct period and style of British productions that gave the world some enduring classics: Upstairs Downstairs, its sequel The Duchess of Duke Street, Poldark, Danger: UXB, and of course (by informal consensus the best TV series ever made), All Creatures Great and Small. These 1970s productions share a look and feel that is quickly recognizable (with videotaped interior and filmed outdoor scenes, and a pool of outstanding actors, in the British tradition, many of them famous in higher-budget theatrical films also). They all aired in the US when they were new and occasionally later, and captivated audiences, who have looked eagerly for them since. (And who were, therefore, all the more disappointed with a later, 1990s re-make of some of Sayers's Wimsey stories, slick but without the heart and energy of this 1970s classic series with Ian Carmichael.) The original stories by Sayers are themselves very entertaining; she was one of the most intellectual, and certainly the most hard-working, of the British detective-fiction writers who flourished between the wars. (One of her stories turns on the gender of a definite article in French; another, relying on details of architecture, sent her studying the subject for six months so that she would know what she was talking about -- modern best-seller writers, please note.) Her fondness for and knowledge of the Church of England informs a number of the dramatizations, especially The Nine Tailors, thought by many people (including me) to be best of them -- certainly its plot is a lollapalooza. But they are all very good.