DVD Review: Paradise Postponed & Timuss Regained

The late British novelist, John Mortimer, is most famous for his series of novels featuring the barrister Horace Rumpole. Rumpole Of The Bailey, in particular, went on to have enormous success as a television show on both sides of the Atlantic. A barrister himself, Mortimer defended Virgin records when they were charged with obscenity for including the word bollocks in the title of the Sex Pistols album, Never Mind The Bollocks. Thus, it's not surprising that he had great success with novels about life in and around the London courts, specifically The Old Bailey, the infamous criminal court. However, that didn't stop him from branching out into writing about other matters, including his satirical look at British social mores and the class structure in Paradise Postponed and its sequel, Titmuss Regained.

As with Rumpole, both books made a successful transition to the small screen in 1986 and 1991, respectively, and now they have made the move to DVD. On Tuesday October 6, Acorn Media will be releasing the five DVD set, Paradise Postponed/Titmuss Regained (with the first four discs comprising Paradise Postponed and the last one, Titmuss Regained). While the age of the original episodes means they are in full-screen format and the sound is merely Dolby digital stereo  — instead of the wide screen and surround sound of which most of us are now accustomed — that by no means detracts from both the quality of the writing and acting that are on view in all five discs.

Paradise Postponed tells the story of the Simcox family — brothers Henry (Peter Egan) and Fred (Paul Shelly), their father Reverend Simeon Simcox (Micael Hordern) — and Leslie Titmuss through a series of flashbacks that traces the interrelationship between the family and Titmuss from the time the boys are all children up to the present day. As the series opens, noted social activist and wealthy brewery owner Reverend Simeon Simcox is clearly reaching the end of his life. So it's no surprise when he soon passes away. What is surprising to the press and family who attend the funeral, though, is the appearance of Conservative cabinet minister Leslie Titmuss. The Reverend, he tells anybody who will listen, was always very good to him as a child, and he was attending the funeral not as a representative of the government, but as an old friend of the family.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the recently published What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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