Not your usual costume drama from the Merchant/Ivory team because it's about working class people and is genuinely tragic. Bella sets off sexual sparks in the placid Victorian family who shelter her when she is found wandering, broke and heavily pregnant, but her past comes back to haunt her. Adapted from a novel by HE Bates. find out more...

Superbly gothic version of Charlotte Bronte's archetypal romantic novel. Orson Welles is admirably dark as Rochester to Joan Fontaine's winsome Jane. The mysterious aspects of the story and the ensuing romance are all played out against a tremendously atmospheric backdrop. Great production, and yes, Aldous Huxley really did write the screen play.

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This is the fabulous BBC version of the great and tragic last novel by Thomas Hardy. Robert Powell is the stone mason who dreams of a decent education, but seems to be getting no nearer his goal despite escaping his marriage. find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

Sumptuous adaptation of Edith Wharton's period drama set in the NY high society of the 1880s. Day Lewis plays the gentleman set to be married to May in the wedding of the year, but increasingly fascinated by the beautiful Countess Olenska. Decor reflects and oppresses characters, posture, gesture, glance and witty ironic narration convey not only individual psychology but the ideals of an entire etiquette-obsessed elite. Tragedy awaits. Awesome; one of the best period adaptations ever made, both find out more...

Becky is determined to be the controller of her own destiny despite her relatively lowly origins and we follow her frequently fraught attempts to land a man of wealth and the lengths that she will go to in order to achieve her goals, from the idiot Jos Sedley to the caddish Rawdon Crawley. Vanity Fair is a superior literary adaptation from the BBC set within the upper echelons of English society during the war with Napoleon. find out more...

Becky is determined to be the controller of her own destiny despite her relatively lowly origins and we follow her frequently fraught attempts to land a man of wealth and the lengths that she will go to in order to achieve her goals, from the idiot Jos Sedley to the caddish Rawdon Crawley. Vanity Fair is a superior literary adaptation from the BBC set within the upper echelons of English society during the war with Napoleon. find out more...