Christopher Fry's The Brontës of Haworth

BlogCritics reviews the upcoming The Brontës of Haworth DVD release:

Playwright Christopher Fry's The Brontës of Haworth, a five-episode dramatization of the lives of the 19th century literary sisters and their tortured brother televised in England in 1973 but never shown in the United States will be available in February in a two-disc DVD set from Acorn Media. Beginning with their widowed father's birthday gift to the young Branwell of the set of toy soldiers which became the inspiration for the children's early imaginative efforts as they joined together to create a fictional world modeled on the Byronic romances popular at the time, Fry traces their attempts to make their way in the world, their failures and their success, culminating in the sister's monumental achievement and early deaths. (...)
Clearly it is [Michael] Kitchen and perhaps [Alfred] Burke who are the stars of this production. Perhaps not as oddly as it would seem in a film about the Brontë family, much of the early episodes are concerned with the tragic life of Branwell rather than that of his sisters. He is after all a man haunted by demons beyond his control, the kind of fodder no dramatist can resist.  (...)
The DVD runs approximately 260 minutes. The only bonus material it contains is a short prose essay on the Brontë's home in Haworth. (Jack Goodstein)