Helen Mirren At The Bbc

The Age

Thursday October 16, 2008

Philippa Hawker

Helen Mirren at the BBC

Roadshow, 1080 mins, M, TV box set, 1974-1995

3.5/5

Here are 11 BBC productions in which Helen Mirren starred for the BBC, made between 1974 and 1995, alongside a wonderful cast of fellow actors. They are a mixture of classics and contemporary works: there are two Shakespeare plays (Cymbeline, and the 1981 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream); The Changeling; Shaw's The Apple Cart; J.M. Barrie's The Little Minister; and a Restoration comedy (Wycherley's The Country Wife). The newer plays include Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist, Edna O'Brien's Mrs Reinhardt; Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (in which the adult actors all play seven-year-old children); and the 1995 play The Hawk, in which Mirren plays a woman who starts to suspect that her husband is a serial killer. On the first disc there are two extras: a 15-minute Parkinson appearance, in which he introduces her as the sex queen of the Royal Shakespeare Company; and a recent half-hour interview in which Mirren reflects on the productions in the box set, concluding by saying, "Now those days are gone and they don't do The Philanthropist or The Apple Cart on television any more, I realise how incredibly lucky I was."

DVD extras include: interviews

© 2008 The Age

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