The BBC's classic 1971 drama series reached its climax in these last two episodes which cover the most glorious years of the reign of Elizabeth I, from the triumph of the Spanish Armada to the Virgin Queen's death as a raddled, grotesque old woman in 1603. Still capricious in her dotage, she fends off the threat both of the Spaniards and of rebels closer to her own court through a series of deft political moves that leave her ageing courtiers struggling to keep up. Glenda Jackson's performance in the title role remains one of the wonders of quality television drama. Her portrayal of a complex, wilful, frequently terrified monarch with an instinct for survival that, until the end, was often all that stood between her and personal and national disaster, more than lives up to its Emmy-Award-winning status. There may have been more action-packed interpretations of Elizabeth's life and times since, but as a drama that balances the driving personalities of an age with the turbulent undertow of inter-court intrigue and conspiracy, Elizabeth R may never be bettered. -Piers Ford.

Shackleton is not a biopic of the great Anglo-Irish explorer but a dramatisation of the failed trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-16. As written and directed by Charles (Longtitude) Sturridge the production, filmed on real ice floes in Greenland, stays remarkably close to the facts, capturing the look of the surviving expedition photos of Frank Hurley (collected in the book South With Endurance) with great fidelity. Kenneth Branagh makes no attempt at an authentic accent but otherwise gives a powerful impression of a most commanding personality. When the expedition ship Endurance became locked in the Antarctic ice Shackleton vowed to bring every man home alive, and against virtually impossible odds, including a 700-mile journey in an open boat through some of the worst seas in the world, he did just that. This superlative mini-series realises the story with production values and cinematography which would not disgrace a big-budget feature (Hurley's own 1919 documentary film can be seen on video in South). Intense physical drama, strong performances and Adrian Johnston's fine score combine here to deeply moving effect, marred only a little by a rushed conclusion. With Roland Huntford, author of the definitive Shackleton biography, as production advisor, this easily stands as the benchmark for all future comparable films. -Gary S Dalkin.

The BBC's six-part drama series based on the life of Elizabeth I, first broadcast in 1971, followed hot on the heels of The Six Wives of Henry VIII. It was an instant popular and critical success. Recently, more opulent films like Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love (both 1998) have happily mined the life and times of the Virgin Queen to create rich visual banquets. But apart from the occasionally dodgy studio lighting, Elizabeth R stands the test of time well with its patina of classic television intact. Literate scripts reflect their documentary sources, portray the constant tension of a royal existence at the heart of a succession of life-threatening conspiracies, and convey the claustrophobia of an age of intrigue in which it was impossible to distinguish between the watcher and the watched. These first two episodes deal with Elizabeth's adolescence, her dangerous relationship with her sister Mary Tudor, her accession to the throne and a relationship with Earl of Leicester that hovers constantly on the verge of scandal. There are splendid performances from a galaxy of British character actors, but Glenda Jackson dominates in the title role that added television success to a film career then at its peak. -Piers Ford.

The BBC dished up Lorna Doone as its classic costume drama for Christmas 2000 and served its source material well. R. D. Blackmore's novel of dangerous times and inter-clan warfare on Exmoor during the time of the Monmouth Rebellion is highly romantic. At its centre is the ongoing war between John Ridd (Richard Coyle), the yeoman with a noble heart, and Carver Doone, the reckless young leader of the outlawed family who murdered Ridd's father. Aside from their familial enmity, they are also rival suitors for the hand of the eponymous heroine (a spirited performance from Amelia Warner). The production avoids overkill on the swashbuckling front: the battle scenes are grim and bloody; Lorna herself is cocooned by her family but the Doone clan lives in a bleak, rough encampment with few comforts. And in Aidan Gillan's Carver, we have an anti-hero of extraordinary charisma, driven and ultimately destroyed by his single-minded determination to make Lorna his wife or see her dead. A stirring evening's viewing which offers the good old-fashioned satisfaction of just desserts all round. -Piers Ford.

Fine costumes made a major contribution to Elizabeth R, one of the most successful television dramas ever made by the BBC. Copied accurately from contemporary portraits of the greatest of the Tudor dynasts and her court, they drew fascinated crowds at exhibitions coinciding with the first broadcast of the production in 1971. In fact, the series consisted of six individual plays, each of which stands alone as a fine piece of dramatic writing for television. These episodes focus on the plotting and conspiracies that dominated the middle years of Elizabeth's reign, the pressure she faced to marry and secure the succession and of course her tortured relationship with her cousin and her greatest threat, Mary, Queen of Scots. Glenda Jackson is magnificent as Elizabeth, weaving diplomatic spells around her advisors and suitors beneath a skittish veneer, and lashing out at the situations that only she, as the anointed Queen of an often-divided country, can resolve through her decisions. While the story is played out through dialogue rather than swashbuckling action, there are machinations enough to satisfy the most demanding soap opera fan. More bloodthirsty viewers will relish the execution of Mary, still one of the grimmest scenes ever played in British television drama. -Piers Ford.

This layered film, a labour of love from director Jonathan Demme and star Oprah Winfrey, covers a lot of turf in its nearly three-hour running time. Part slavery fable, part mother-daughter tale, part ghost story, Beloved demands an audience's full attention from its dramatic, slightly bewildering opening, when a family dog comes down on the wrong side of some angry, unseen force. But Demme and his talented cast provide an unforgettable payoff for those who surrender. The film traces the life of Sethe (played in her middle years by Winfrey), a former slave who has rebuilt what seems to be a peaceful, productive life in Ohio. Yet through chilling, sparing use of flashback, Demme slowly unveils, as does the Toni Morrison masterpiece on which the film is based, the horrors of Sethe's former life, and the terrible event that led to the haunting of Sethe's home. While the horrors of slavery and the bloody event in Sethe's family leave undeniable impressions, the film's brilliance is also evidenced in smaller, equally satisfying ways. Rachel Portman's spiritual-influenced score is as uplifting as it is haunting, and the glimpses of the post-slavery African American world-as with a simple family outing to a local carnival, or a ladies' sewing-and-gospel circle-make this a treat for the intellect as well as the heart. The members of the cast, especially Kimberly Elise as Sethe's struggling daughter and Thandie Newton as the mysterious title character, are supremely affecting. -Anne Hurley, Amazon. com.

Carol Reed (The Third Man) directed this 1965 portrait of the relationship between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), who commissioned the artist to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Based on a novel by Irving Stone, the script of The Agony and the Ecstasy plods along, juggling the dynamics between the two men along with a somewhat perfunctory love story and distracting battle sequences. Reed seems more attuned to the nuances and great pains of the artistic process, as seen in sequences of Michelangelo working. But the overall focus of the film is unfortunately fuzzy. -Tom Keogh.

Cold Mountain, freely adapted from Charles Frazier's beloved bestseller, boasts an impeccable pedigree as a respectable Civil War love story, offering everything you'd want from a romantic epic-except a resonant emotional core. Everything in this sweeping, Odyssean journey depends on believing in the instant love that ignites during a very brief encounter between genteel, city-bred preacher's daughter Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law), who deserts the battlefield to return, weary and wounded, to Ada's inherited farm in the rural town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina. In an epic (but dramatically tenuous) case of absence making hearts grow fonder, Inman endures a treacherous hike fraught with danger (and populated by supporting players including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and others) while the struggling, inexperienced Ada is aided by the high-spirited Ruby (Renée Zellweger), forming a powerful farming partnership that transforms Ada into a strong, lovelorn survivor. The film's episodic structure slightly weakens its emotional impact, and it's fairly obvious that director Anthony Minghella is striving to repeat the prestigious romanticism of his Oscar-winning hit The English Patient. For the most part it works, especially in the dynamic performances of Zellweger and Kidman, and the explosive 1864 battle of Petersburg, Virginia, is recreated with violent, percussive intensity. Those who admired Frazier's novel may regret some of the changes made in Minghella's adaptation (the ending is particularly altered), but Cold Mountain remains a high-class example of grand, old-fashioned filmmaking, boosted by star power of the highest order. -Jeff Shannon.

Based on the only surviving record of the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference, the BBC/HBO produced Conspiracy reconstructs the two-hour meeting during which leading members of the SS and the Nazi government made definitive plans for the genocide of Europe's Jews. Sixteen men sit around a table and politely discuss the mechanics and ramifications of murdering millions. As SS General Reinhard Heydrich, overall architect of the Final Solution, Kenneth Branagh is brilliant, charming, manipulative and threatening, a cultured man seemingly without a soul. As his aid, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, Stanley Tucci is the incarnation of the banality of evil, an efficient and self-effacing bureaucrat in a fine performance marred only by a hint of the actor's American accent. Colin Firth is a powerful foil for Branagh as Dr Wilhelm Stuckart, author of Nazi Germany's race laws and a stickler for the rule of law, no matter how insane the law may have become; while David Threlfall makes a striking impression as the one man who comes closest to taking a moral stand, Dr Wilhelm Kritzinger. Directed in an elegantly controlled style by Frank Pierson, Conspiracy is the Janus face of the 1957 classic 12 Angry Men and a chilling companion to the BBC/HBO Churchill drama The Gathering Storm (2002). On the DVD: Conspiracy comes to DVD with text profiles of the four leading actors and the director and two featurettes, one running two minutes, the other four, neither of which is any more than an electronic press-kit. Sound is clear, perfectly good Dolby Surround, while the picture, though anamorphically enhanced at 16:9, is no more than adequate. -Gary S Dalkin.

In yet another example of Demi Moore's astonishing narcissism, this appalling adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Great American Novel becomes a teary, talk-show-worthy story of a woman rediscovering the erotic, of interrupted love, of a brave-but-beleaguered heroine's personal struggle against male stupidity. Never mind that this has little to do with Hawthorne's magnificent, protofeminist book, which is a million times more relevant today than this film could ever be. Director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields) deserves to be horsewhipped for colluding with Moore's self-fascination, while Gary Oldman should be kicked in the pants for allowing the novel's main character to come off as an inconsequential ninny. Making matters worse, Robert Duvall can be seen ridiculously dancing with a deerskin on his head. If The Scarlet Letter were a joke, it would be a very bad joke. But it's not, and that's worse. -Tom Keogh.