The Evelyn Waugh Collection On DVD!

Out this week on DVD is The Evelyn Waugh Collection, featuring two exceptional British TV versions of novels by the acerbic author Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) and his caustic looks at different factions of British society. In A Handful Of Dust, Waugh's gaze is turned on the lifestyles of the upper class, where a bored wife (Kristen Scott Thomas) takes up with a handsome but impoverished man (Rupert Graves) to spice up her life, leaving her husband (James Wilby) and young son back at their rambling estate. But tragedy intercedes. With Alec Guiness, Stephen Frye and Judi Dench. Scoop is about a young journalist and naturalist William Boot (Michael Maloney) who is mistakenly sent by his newspaper, the "Daily Beast," to cover an impending civil war in the obscure (fictional) African republic of Ishmaelia. A particularly sardonic look at politics and the press, based on Waugh's offbeat experiences as a war correspondent.