The Romance Collection: DVD Review (2008)

From the BBC via A&E, an impressive, 14-disc collection designed to make an Anglophile faint.

The set includes eight films, not the least of which is the heated, 1996 version of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” with Colin Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth.

Also included are Nigel Hawthorn, Jonathan Pryce, Diana Rigg and Sir Peter Ustinov in 2001’s “Victoria & Albert”; Kate Beckinsale reminding us she can act in 1997’s “Emma”; Ciaran Hinds and Deborah Findlay in 1997’s “Jane Eyre”; and Max Beesley and Samantha Morton in the very good 1998 product of “Tom Jones.”

Hinds appears again in “Ivanhoe”; Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern star in “The Scarlet Pimpernel”; and challenging “Prejudice” as the best film in the lot is the 2001 production of “Lorna Doon,” with Martin Clunes, Richard Coyle, Aidan Gillen and Amelia Warner.

It doesn’t win, but it comes close.

Grade: A-