In the final episode of Brideshead Revisited Charles Ryder and Julia sit on the steps in the enormous house and agree to part. They're both weeping and generally inarticulate, but one of the 'broken sentences' Charles manages to mutter between stifled sobs is 'So long to say so little'. It could serve quite nicely for the last word on this paradoxically compelling serial. Rather like [Evelyn Waugh's] book itself, I suspect that it was the first half that got us watching the second. The departure of Sebastian, leaving centre stage to Charles Ryder, consigned most of the final episodes to a level of infuriating dullness. It's foreseeable defect, but one which scriptwriter John Mortimer seemed reluctant to avoid.

There's been much talk of Mortimer's faithfulness to the text, but in changing medium—from novel to TV series—such commendable rectitude can often be technically inept if not wrongheaded...