'Lilies'
(William Atkinson, Eithne Browne, et al / 3-Disc DVD / NR / 2007 / Acorn Media)
Overview: Tough, sexy, funny and heartbreaking, Lillies details the lives of Iris, May and Ruby Moss - Catholic sisters coming of age in a dockland terraced house. Familial love sustains them, and their fortunes are bound to those of their brother and their father. Set in the years immediately following the First World War, Lilies pulls no punches in its storytelling. It depicts a sensual, vivid and sometimes savage universe - where life is lived on a knife-edge of poverty, fuelled by various kinds of love. Dadda, the family's charismatic and mercurial father married very young, is now widowed, and his struggle to nurture his unruly children proves both moving and comic.
DVD Verdict: Ah, this is period drama like it’s supposed to be: not stuffy or stodgy but powerful, passionate, and alive with love and sex and tenderness. Three young women - sisters Iris (Catherine Tyldesley), May (Leanne Rowe: Oliver Twist), and Ruby (Kerrie Hayes) - struggle to find their paths in life in post-World War I Liverpool, where the war has changed everything, from the gentleness of their brother, returning veteran Billy (Daniel Rigby: Flyboys), to the opportunities open to women in a daring new age.
It’s still a hard road, though, for working-class women. This eight-part miniseries - created and written by Heidi Thomas (I Capture the Castle), it aired on the BBC earlier this year - takes the sisters through unlikely romances that will change them forever, leads them to a new understanding of their tormented widowed father (Brian McCardie, The Ghost and the Darkness), and threatens to shred their close relationship. Grand and sweeping, beautifully performed and compulsively watchable, this is like a romantic novel you’ve never read. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:
Behind-The-Scenes Featurette
Photo Gallery
Cast Filmographies
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