Rating: 
Summary: Great Art based on Great Art
Review: This production need not be limited to "ever made for TV." This is one of the greatest and most profound movies ever made. Every element of every scene is superb and riveting. I watched it again, twenty years after first seeing it, and enjoyed it even more with my Southern Baptist wife who kept insisting "let's watch just one more episode"!This story is esentially Catholicism talking to itself through both the main characters and the sheer majesty of the Brideshead Estate (Castle Howard). This work is epically and evengelically Catholic. Anyone who sees "Brideshead Revisited" will find his tongue stopped about pedophile priests and "Hitler's pope" because his mind has been slowly, platonically wrestled around to see the glory of God's church on earth. Waugh is a midwife first, author second; and I would say the same of Mortimer, who made this production happen. Thank God for both men and for this production.
Rating:
Summary: DVD quality is there but you have to have decent player...
Review: I really do have to take offense on behalf of the engineers who did the DVD transfer. I have a Sony SVDP-s9000ES player and it handles the transfer with aplomb. Perhaps if you have a cheaper player, the compression rate would be a problem but if you have a real player the discs play superbly. It stuns me how picky people are, who are too cheap to pay for quality!
Rating:
Summary: One of the very best
Review: This is one of the very best programs ever made. They don't make shows like this any more - guess they are too expensive. But I don't think public TV does it's job unless they produce shows like this. The scenery is beautiful and the acting is wonderful. If you've never seen it, you are in for a real treat.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Series
Review: I am not one for noticing technological fine points so I will not comment on the less than technically perfect DVD. However, I do love excellent writing and acting and John Mortimer's adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel is simply superb. It is what brought Jeremy Irons to the attention of American audiences. He is the narrator of this story about a very wealthy Catholic English family. He is drawn into this family when he meets the son, Sebastian, at his college. Eventually, he is drawn into relationships with more family members and Sebastian's sisters, Julia and Cordelia, also become very important to him. Sebastian is ultimately a flawed and trajic man whereas our narrator begins to adopt the worst aspects of the upper class into his own character: boredom, lassitude, disenchantment and jadedness. Set in the earlier 20th century, the recreation of detail period and costume is also outstanding.
Rating: 
Summary: Acceptable DVD of a Good Adaptation of a Great Novel.
Review: It's the best, and it's the worst. The picture is fine, the sound is uneven and muddy in parts, and the music that plays when the menu is displayed is maddeningly repetitive. But it's a great story with truly quirky performances. Jeremy Irons' performance is way too one-dimensional, though. Recommended only for those who have read the book and want to enrich the experience with the made-for-TV version, those who want to wallow in the visual splendor of an English castle, and/or those with the patience to sit through eleven hours listening to whiny rich Brits.
Rating:
Summary: Good compromises, but disc 3 a little crowded
Review: The restoration is gorgeous and overall the balance between material length and compression is great. But there's a slight hitch. BRIDESHEAD was 11 episodes long, with episodes 1 and 11 around 100 minutes each, and episodes 2-10 were around 50 minutes each. So, disc 1 (eps. 1-3) and disc 2 (eps. 4-7) hold ~200 minutes each, while disc 3 (eps. 8-11) has ~250 minutes crammed onto it. And it shows. The compression rate is so high that you can see wainscotting on the walls waver and flat patches of color. It *IS* ignorable and the episodes are watchable, especially if you're a regular viewer and not a hypersensitive resolution-junkie addicted to Superbit discs. :^) But if you are one of those poor sharp-eyed souls, realize that there has been a compromise.
Rating:
Summary: A GREAT ADAPTATION
Review: EVELYN WAUGH'S WROTE A GREAT NOVEL ABOUT A WAY OF LIFE THAT IS NO MORE,AND THIS TV SERIES IS ONE OF THE BEST ADAPTATIONS TO FILM OF A REALLY GRAT BOOK.
I THINK THE ACTING WAS GREAT AND THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY SUPERB. AND OF COURSE ONE MUST NOT FORGET TO MENTION CASTLE HOWARD WHO WAS IN MY OPINION ONE OF THE STAR PLAYERS IN THIS FILM.
TO GETHER WITH THE "JEWEL IN THE CROWN" THIS IS ONE OF THE MAJOR FILM CLASSICS OF OUR TIME.
IT IS A PITY THAT DESPITE THE FACT THAT BOTH WERE PRODUCED SOME TWENTY YEARS AGO NOTHING COMPARABLE HAS BEEN PRODUCED SINCE THEN. I HOPE THEY ARE NOT THE LAST OF THEIR KIND.
WITHOUT DOUBT A GREAT PIECE OF FILM MAKING.
Rating: 
Summary: We deserved better!
Review: So, after waiting 5 years since the advent of DVD, Brideshead Revisited has finally arrived - and frankly what a let-down (I'm sorry to say). O.K, so this DVD has the full uncut version of the series plus a booklet and (a very few) extra features, but for such a critically acclaimed series I really think that the public has been seriously short-changed by this release for a number of reasons.
Most importantly, even though a lot of work has obviously gone into the restoration of the original film stock, I'd hardly say that this DVD is a great showcase for the sharp and detailed images for which the format is so well-known. This is particularly true of disc three which shows such a marked decrease in sharpness that it's debateable whether it's any better than VHS. Also, unless my eyes deceived me there seems to be some evidence of motion distortion on all three discs. I think the best thing one can say about the picture quality is that since it's DVD at least it won't get any worse with repeated viewings.
I'm quite surprised too that this highly-regarded title wasn't released by one of the bigger studios such as Paramount, MGM or Columbia Tristar etc. It really wasn't very reassuring to see the name Acorn Media on the packaging. Who are they? - (In fact the text notes on disc 1 come dangerously close to admitting that this company actually has very little experience of film restoration or DVD mastering.)
Next on my hit-list is the DVD menu screen. It's very nice to look at and listen to at first but rapidly becomes quite infuriating in that you have to wait for ages until you can activate anything. Then when the options do eventually appear, we find that there are no alternate language soundtracks and worse still, not even English subtitles. I personally believe that bearing in mind the technology inherent in DVD, ALL releases should have subtitles for the title's original spoken language for the benefit of people who are hard-of-hearing or deaf.
As for the extra features, well, I suppose that what there is is quite good, but no commentaries, no cast interviews or featurettes? It all seems a bit limp for such a historic piece of British television. I'd have to admit though, the booklet is quite good.
Admittedly my review is a bit harsh but I'd still recommended that fans of the series buy it (if only because DVD picture & sound quality has such great longevity in comparison to VHS). But I strongly suspect that it could all have been done so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Incomparably Sumptuous
Review: Brideshead Revisited has been the standard bearer for magnificence in TV mini series since it was first shown in the early 1980s. I loved it then and when the VHS version became available in the late 1980s I bought a set which has been viewed innumerable times. Realizing that VHS tape doesn't last forever, and not wishing to be without access to Sebastian, Charles, Julia, and the other characters, I bought the DVD version as soon as it became available. It is like watching the series for the first time. The DVD version has been restored and enhanced so that Brideshead is indeed, in Charles' words, "very near to heaven". Not only is the series visually more beautiful than ever, the audio is also superb. You won't miss a single word. Brideshead Revisited is a story of lost youth, fading illusions, and crumbling glory, but it is also an evocation of growing religious faith and the workings of divine grace. No matter how many times it is watched it is always an uplifting experience. And now the DVD version has made that experience incomparably more rewarding.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent DVD Collector's Set!
Review: Finally! This television masterpiece has come to DVD in a nicely packaged and digitally remastered presentation. I'm not sure what the problem was with Mr. Stewart's player, but the discs all play beautifully on the several players I've tried them in. And the color restoration and remastering provides the clearest and best picture I've ever seen. Based on Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, Brideshead is an elegant and unforgettable story set in the fading years of the British Empire and stars Jeremy Irons and Anthony Edwards in career-making roles. I'm a little disappointed not to see an interview with Irons on the DVD, but the *real* reason to buy this is for the series itself. It's well worth revisiting, again and again.
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