New releases

There's an interesting article on Wikipedia about the 1954 TV adapatation of Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Peter Cushing. It seems there's someone quite knowledgeable about Nigel Kneale (who adapted the book for TV) writing for the site as there are good articles both about him and his other work, such as Quatermass, on the site.

I can remember seeing the adaptation back in the 90s when the BBC repeated it one night on BBC2. As well as being a very powerful adaptation, helped by some excellent performances especially by Cushing (as Winston Smith) and Andre Morell (as O'Brien), it's also a fascinating example of a kind of TV production that one doesn't see too much any more in that stylistically it has as much in common with the stage (not least in the fact that it was performed live, not prerecorded) as it does with film and it's an interesting document of the evolution of television presentation.

But, the most exciting line of the article comes at the end:

The production is due for a home DVD release in the UK in December 2004, as a fully-restored print with several extra features.

Well, that goes straight onto the Christmas list, then.