Strangers and Brothers (1984)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by Julian Bond, based on the novel by C.P. Snow
Directed by Ronald Wilson
Starring Shaughan Seymour, Joan Greenwood, Nigel Havers, Cherie Lunghi, Anthony Hopkins

Features:

• Program Synopsis
  
• Slide Show
  
• Web Links
  

Lewis Eliot (Seymour) has just passed the bar exam and begins a life in law in London. However, being a man without family connections, he finds it rather difficult to begin a successful career as a lawyer. Thus, he takes a position at Cambridge. He winds up as a writer, but along the way he is involved with major political scandals up throughout the 1960s. He is knighted and as his eyesight fails in his older age, he opts for an operation to help reverse the degradation. The operation is dangerous and nearly costs him his life.

...hmmm...wha...ahem...is it over? I'm sorry--I must have dozed off a bit. After sitting through thirteen hours of very boring testosterone-intensive story that tends to happen. All kidding aside, though, this has to be one of the most boring miniseries I have ever seen. Not one ounce of the writing helps this situation any; none of the dialogue helps the actors create a sense of urgency about anything...not that there's anything that urgent in the story to begin with. Oh, sure: Eliot winds up involved with a couple of political scandals, but other than that, there's really not much going on. To their credit, most of the actors really do try to do the best they can with what they have been given. Seymour has a lot resting on his shoulders, but alas--he was doomed to begin with. His character is so thinly written that any actor, no matter how powerful, would have had a difficult time bringing him to life. I do get the idea that the novel is much more interesting than this production made it out to be and if I ever can carve out a year and half, I might just sit down and read it.

Unfortunately, the DVD presentation itself doesn't do much to help matters. Let me start with the cover. You'll notice that it says "Featuring Sir Anthony Hopkins". I was just a bit pissed to find out that he only played a small part in two of the episodes late in the story. It's a very rare thing when I get suckered in by these adverts on the cover of DVDs, but this one got me. It's not really any surprise, but Hopkins is the only thing that breathes any sort of life into this script--although not even he is not enough to save this show.

The features on the DVD are very paltry, and what little is available is mostly useless. I'll start with the Web Links: there are four of them. In order to access them you have to write them down, carry them over to your computer, and type them in to get to them. In other words, they are not DVD-ROM links, but rather text links that show up on the screen. That's all well and good, I guess, but I tried all four of them and the only one that worked was the last one for the ExxonMobile Masterpiece Theatre website. So that's quite discouraging.

As for the "Program Synopsis", I guess they've added this feature for people like me who had a tendency to nod off. It's simply a "Cliff's Notes" version of the plot. And it's not like this is anything even remotely novel, since it's simply a report of the same information that is found on the back of each cover in the boxed set. Gah. The Slide Show, lastly, is merely a collection of images from the film in random order that you can peruse with your remote control.

If you see this one sitting on the shelves somewhere, just run away from it. Try it out only if you are looking for the ultimate cure for insomnia.