Having recently re-read The Picture of Dorian Gray, I decided to borrow any film or video adaptations of the work in the NYPL’s possession. That’s how I got my hot little hands on The Oscar Wilde Collection, a two-DVD set containing BBC TV productions of Dorian Gray, An Ideal Husband, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and The Importance of Being Earnest, plus an hourlong documentary titled The Life and Loves and Oscar Wilde. Oh, it’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! The plays’ original airdates range from 1969 to 1986, so an attentive viewer can derive much amusement from the evolution of the gentlemen’s hairstyles and the ladies’ makeup—particularly the tragic ubiquity of the whiteboy ’fro among the cast of Dorian Gray. Then there are the actors: Jeremy Brett as Husband’s dashing Viscount Goring and Dorian’s tragic Basil Hallward! Paul McGann (somewhat strangely mustached) as Jack in Earnest!

EEEEEEEEEEEE!