Helen Mirren at the BBC

Helen Mirren is now a household name across the globe, winning just about every award going for The Queen; however, she has never moved entirely away from the small sc... more >

Helen Mirren is now a household name across the globe, winning just about every award going for The Queen; however, she has never moved entirely away from the small screen, and in Britain she is arguably better known for her indomitable Jane Tennison in the Prime Suspect series. Yet before her more mainstream work she acted in a number of excellent BBC dramas, eleven of which feature on this superb box set.

In one of her earliest television roles, she gave a tour-de-force as the wicked Beatrice-Joanna in the Jacobean tragedy The Changeling, the first of four dramas she did for the Play of the Month strand. She gave strong support as the King’s mistress in George Bernard Shaw’s The Apple Cart (although ironically she is upstaged at the end by Prunella Scales as the Queen!), gave a funny, flirtatious turn as a gypsy girl in J.M. Barrie’s seldom performed The Little Minister and - best of all - starred as the not so simple Country Wife in the eponymous Restoration Comedy. Mirren’s work in the RSC lead to roles in two BBC Shakespeare adaptations; she gave arguably the definitive Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, bringing out the comedy of the role beautifully. Her scenes with Bottom are both touching and funny. She also starred in one of the Bard’s strangest plays, as Imogen in Cymbeline.

In 1975 she played Clara Petacci, Mussolini’s mistress, in Caesar and Claretta. Set on the couple’s last night before their execution, she delivers a moving performance opposite Robert Hardy’s magnificent Benito. In the most experimental piece of her work for the BBC she starred as a child in Dennis Potter’s remarkable, savage Blue Remembered Hills, aping the behaviour of a young girl with uncanny precision. She was unusually vulnerable as a woman suffering a marital breakdown in Mrs. Reinhardt, and has a magnificent confrontation scene in The Hawk, in which she suspects her husband may be a serial killer.

After a similarly excellent retrospective of Judi Dench’s work for the BBC, it is to be hoped that more of these invaluable collections showcasing the TV work of other great British actors will soon be available.

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DVD Extras

• 6 discs
• Michael Parkinson interview from 1975
• Exclusive new interview with Helen Mirren
• 16 Page collectors' booklet.

Film Details

Cast

Helen Mirren

Technical Details