NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

Image: 3/5
Brideshead Revisited is photographed on location in England (Oxford, Castle Howard), Italy (Venice, mostly) and Malta – there are even a few scenes on the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 at sea. These images not only serve as a kind of counterpoint to the malaise that permeates the story, they make our staying with the series for eleven hours endurable. If the picture quality suffers in this respect so does our involvement. Unlike watching a second or third rate print of Meet John Doe, where allowances can be made, we cannot readily survive a less than textured, colorful and properly resolved Brideshead Revisited.

While no one would have anticipated the high resolution beauty of a Downton Abbey, we might have held out hopes that Acorn’s Blu-ray of Brideshead Revisited would restore the picture to some sort of Pride and Prejudice glory, but in this they will be sorely disappointed. For one thing, Pride and Prejudice was shot in the larger Super 16 mm format, which offers an image of greater width (which is why it comes out at 1.78:1 on the Blu-ray) and for another, Brideshead Revisited is simply not restored – nor is it marketed as such. So it’s something of a mystery how Acorn got stuck with such a shabby source from which to produce a high definition presentation.

One thing we can say about Acorn’s Blu-ray up until now: transfer artifacts and edge enhancement is minimal to non-existent, color and contrast look good, noise is low and DNR does not appear to be in evidence. One has the feeling that all they do is convert their source to Blu-ray without any consideration whatever. I suspect that’s what happened here: that they were given a sub-standard source to work with and presented it without blushing. I don’t know if it was possible in the circumstances but it might have been better for them to have refused it.

The picture is 1080p, despite the “1080i” indication on the back cover, and the image is solid with good movement across the frame. All the Brideshead Revisited DVDs I have seen have problems in both of these respects, the worst of which is that all too often it appears that everything on the verge of falling apart, that the pixels cannot find their way to coherency. This impression is wonderfully absent on the Blu-ray. This and an overall improvement in sharpness is its saving grace. . . or would be if it weren’t for the contrast and color, which is rarely correct.

Interestingly, both contrast and color are remarkably different on the Region 1 and 2 DVDs, with magentas that embarrass themselves on the UK edition, and black levels and color so intense on the US that it ruins the sense of nostalgia the production design and music take such pains to manifest. The Blu-ray is another matter entirely. Much of the time the image is so faded and thin as to fear for its health. One more step and it would be devoid of color altogether. What color there is often gray/green or magenta. On the other hand, along with bit rates hovering in the low 20s, there are scenes where the Blu-ray gets both color and contrast just right - the darker interiors, mostly, though some at Malta are excellent. A great deal of the second episode is very satisfactory, yet the third alternates long passages of crushed contrast with unruly grain.

Whatever else may be said about the Acorn DVD and Blu-ray image renderings it is absolutely true that they are entirely different viewing experiences. The one I find exhausting, the other exasperating. And the UK DVD isn’t right either. It all seems puzzlingly arbitrary. What is all the stranger is that Acorn had made so much fuss over their previous DVD, saying that it was restored from the original televised print (not the camera negative!). Evidently, the Blu-ray begins life elsewhere or did not go through a restoration process.

Audio & Music: 5/9
For some reason the source materials offered to Acorn by ITV did not include a high-definition audio track. Not even LPCM! Nothing but tired Dolby Digital, as if dialogue, no matter how elegant, doesn’t require the best the medium can offer. Rant aside, the new Blu-ray audio represents a significant upgrade in respect to clarity, scale and texture compared to all previous DVDs, which further demonstrates that the source for this transfer is different.

That said there is something that struck me as odd about the audio for the first couple of reels: I had the distinct impression it was running slow! Mr. Iron’s baritone sounded altogether too deep and tired. Even the music seemed to drag. I recognize that Charles is at this point in the story exhausted of life, but still this seemed wrong to me. I skipped forward to his days at Oxford and suddenly the voice and music brightened up. So I measured it. And lo, what takes 110 seconds for the credits and opening monologue on the DVD stretches to 122 on the Blu-ray. That’s a 10% stretch, yet the entire episode is about four and a half minutes longer on Blu-ray than on the Region 1 DVD, which, funnily enough, is 4% longer than the Acorn DVD. The Acorn DVD is the same length as the UK, which suggests it reflects the usual 4% PAL speedup, yet I have always accepted the voices as being correct – which tells me that my ear is not as sharp as I always assumed. Further personal insults are endured with other episode timings: e.g. episodes 9, 10 and 11 are 53:16/55:50, 51:44/54:12, 100:13/104:22 respectively. So, except for the odd stretch at the beginning, the Blu-ray seems to have the speed correct.

Extras: 7
First up is “Revisiting Brideshead” - a 2006 documentary featuring retrospective interviews with Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, director Charles Sturridge, and some disregardable thoughts by various TV historians and critics.

Also included are illuminating and at times very entertaining commentaries to accompany four of the episodes, each with a different panel that include actors Jeremy Irons, Diana Quick, Nickolas Grace and Anthony Andrews, producer/writer Derek Granger and director Charles Sturridge.

“Brideshead Remembered” is a lengthy audio commentary, new to this release I believe, by the show’s first director Michael Lindsay Hogg played over a photo gallery. Ten minutes worth of funny (rather than completely silly) outtakes round out the bonus features.

Recommendation: 5
The thin colorless image notwithstanding, the Blu-ray is an improvement of sorts: the audio is definitely clearer and fuller and the picture quality is more coherent and sharper. I should think that someday the Brits will introduce a properly restored high-definition edition of their, but until then, if you can tolerate the variable picture quality, this Blu-ray is the best rendering of Brideshead Revisited available.

Leonard Norwitz
LensViews
March 6, 2012