I have been a good sport about the 2008 feature film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, both when it came to theaters last summer and to DVD last month. But now someone was nice enough to send me �Brideshead Revisited: 25th Anniversary Collector�s Edition,� a DVD set of the 11-episode British television adaptation from 1982 (which I hadn�t seen in years) plus interesting bonus features. I stand...

The first sound is of pounding hooves and the first sight is of three horsemen hurrying over the crest of a dun colored hill, framed by the wooden gate to a ranch in desolate country. The city marshal and his deputies have come to arrest one of the hired hands for rape and murder, but the landowner, a man called Bragg (Jeremy Irons), stands firm. When the marshal tries to make the arrest Bragg s...