My DVD arrived today


It's been a long time!

I remember the exact date, where I was and what I was doing when this first aired (just like an earlier generation claim with a certain album).
In another week it would have been 31 years exactly but my DVD arrived today and I had to have a sneak preview.

While wife and children slept in warm rooms, I braved the unheated room with the multiregion player (though I'm not sure yet that the disc is strictly R1). I watched Barbara Kellerman and later Tom Conti switch on the gas in their rooms while I grew colder on the lounge. Probably watched 65 minutes before putting it away to watch later in comfort (from the very beginning of coures!). Then sat down to type this.

The sound is rather better than on some previous BBC US releases (eg 1980's Dicken's). Filmed inserts aren't so crisp but I'm not disappointed with the quality. I also watched part of the Frederick Raphael recollections film, which appears to have been made in the 70's.

I first saw the first episode (28/8/77) in a guest house at a snow resort, which by a curious coincidence I'm going to tomorrow (though the guest house has closed and the other hotel burned down in a bushfire Dec 07). It would be too personal (in the sense of trivial) to explain here but I think it hints at one subtle way in which the series has had an effect on my life.

Hope you've all ordered or bought yours. Enjoy!

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I see, Greg, from your other posts that you live in Australia, which explains the cold in August in opposition to the heat we northerners feel then.

I was in high school in Connecticut in 1979-1980, when I first saw The Glittering Prizes on WNET-Thirteen New York. When the station showed it again in the fall of 1983, my junior year at NYU, I took a bus from my Upper East Side room in the high 80s to lower Manhattan, thence to buy for the occasion my first VCR, for about $400, which I hauled back up on a return bus. A transmission failure on the station's part knocked out most of Episode Five for New York viewers. Until this summer's DVD release I have had for 25 years to rely on my worn home-taped VHS cassettes. My sister bought for me the new DVD as a late 2007 Christmas present, when she asked me what I might like. It would be a challenge to think of a better choice.

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I had to be content with audio tapes when our ABC (equivalent of your PBS) re-aired it Dec 78-Jan 79; it was never rescreened here (as far as I knew)after the age of home VHS. I still have these somewhere in boxes.

Interestingly, Ep 2 "A Love Life" on the DVD has the opening and closing music cut. This was "The Very Thought Of You" which I well remember from the audio tapes. Oddly enough it does appear as background music in the epsiode during the ball scene. Maybe they couldn't get the rights to reuse the particular recording that was used in the credits.

Another bit of trivia about this episode is that there appears to be more footage (on the DVD) at the beginning of the Much Ado ABout Nothing production. On my audio tape (ie from Aust. 1978 broadcast) I thought the opening titles dissolved to the tango that closed it. Maybe I'm wrong.

Cheers.

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I also fell in love with it when it was shown on WNET. I was simply transfixed. Although I fell in love with Tom Conti (like a lot of people; it gave his career a huge boost), it was more platonic. My real crush was on Malcolm Stoddard. Anyway, I just got the DVD set, and it's like going back in a time capsule. What an excellent show. Raphael wrote two of my favorite movies -- "Darling" and "Two for the Road" -- as well.

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