A thing of beauty is a joy forever

One of my closest friends on the planet just sent me a copy of the new BBC drama The Line of Beauty on dvd. He assumed that I would like it, given our mutual admiration for, well, almost everything. Walking home in the rain last night after a blissful massage, I was expecting a quiet evening at home, watching mindless television whilst blethering on the phone. Instead, I began to watch this '80s timepiece of a mini-series, proclaimed by The Independent to be "a Thatcher-era Brideshead Revisited... intelligent, properly grown-up drama." I was immediately enraptured and stayed up late to see it all.

Maybe it was the attention to '80s detail, the clothes, the Duran Duran soundtrack, the family drama unfolding outside the Tory cabinet offices, the cocaine-sniffing, the mood swings of the manic-depressive daughter of a supposedly faithful Tory MP, the orchestral manoeuvreing in the dark London parks (ahem), or maybe it was just good television. Oh, and did I mention Alex Wyndham?

Pure heaven.