Campion Review - A Crisis Of Conscience

This review has been delayed by a couple of weeks because I've been wrestling with my conscience. It's given me a real crisis of loyalties. On the one hand, I'm ostensibly writing this review as a public service to people who visit this site expecting to read an honest review of a movie or tv show DVD that they're interested in. On the other, I'm providing a publicity channel for the producers of the disc and their PR company. This site (and for that matter all the sites who review DVDs) relies on the goodwill of PR companies to provide us with copies of forthcoming releases to review, otherwise it would be completely composed of reviews of discs bought by the reviewers for their own entertainment. And therein lies the problem. If I get a disc I don't like, do I bite the hand the feeds me? Or do I put on a fixed grin and say well, although the movie isn't that great, you might get something out of it if...

This is supposed to be a review of the new Campion box set. Campion was a mystery series in the Agatha Christie vein based on a series of novels by Margery Allingham. Contemporary to the 1930s, Campion was a gentleman sleuth aided and abetted in his investigations by his ex-wrestler butler sidekick. In this 1989 BBCtv series, Albert Campion was played by Peter Davison, in his first role after the groundbreaking A Very Peculiar Practice. His butler sidekick Magersfontein Lugg was played by former wrestler turned actor Brian Glover, best remembered as the bewildered Heslop in Porridge "I read a book once. Green it was."

The problem with this disc set is that Acorn Media (via their PR people) have not provided me with the finished product. They haven't even provided me with a full set of check discs. What I have here is a single DVD-R of content - the video file without any menus or other refinements of a single story out of the collection. All I can do at best is comment on the picture quality of the episodes they've seen fit to send, include a few screen shots and write a bit on the background of the show. I could (like a number of print magazine reviewers) make up a review based on the PR release, but my inclination is to think of the readers of the review as ultimately the people I'm writing for.

Campion was a charming series in the same vein as the Francesca Annis Agatha Christie series Partners In Crime - an attention to period detail and a charming whimsicality made for light viewing. It was the sort of show the BBC excelled at once. Co-produced with John Hawkesworth's Consolidated Productions and WGBH Boston, the series ran to sixteen fifty minute episodes, with each story being two fifty minute episodes shown on consecutive Sunday nights.

The two-part story "Sweet Danger" features a number of familiar faces - the always watchable Lysette Anthony and the much missed Iain Cuthbertson (best known as Charlie Endell in the series Budgie). It originally aired on the 12th and 19th January 1990 as the opening of series two. The episode itself is great fun, a highly satisfying mix of light-hearted drama and familiar faces. I'd love to see the finished product, and it's highly likely I'd pick this set up for myself - which I would consider to be pretty much the highest praise for the set. I just think as a reviewer it would be fairer to have provided better review material closer to the finished product. At £29.99 RRP for fourteen hours' worth of entertainment (less with retailer discounts), it's a bargain.

Video
4:3 presentation. Entirely shot on location on 16mm. The show looks absolutely terrific for a 16mm production (think the Hickson Marples for the look).

Audio
Dolby 2.0 reproduction of the original soundtrack.

Extras
No comment

Overall
A problematic release to review fairly because the disc being reviewed is nothing remotely resembling the finished product.