Lytton's Diary

Amidst the host of British TV police procedurals regularly released on DVD, here's an oddity: a newspaper procedural. Gossip columnist Neville Lytton (Peter Bowles) also happens to be an investigator too—it's just that he's looking into scandals and rumors instead of murders and robberies. Set in the Fleet Street of the mid-1980s, when London journalism was being upended by an invasion of Australian magnates (Rupert Murdoch is explicitly mentioned as the owner of the main rival to the publication Lytton works for), the 12 episodes compiled here take the reporter into stories involving old movie stars, tell-all authors, corrupt bankers and politicians, foreign power brokers, beauty pageant contestants, and preachers. The tone is usually fairly light, but occasionally it takes a serious turn and the customarily cynical Lytton is shown to be a man of principle (as when he takes on—at considerable personal risk—a nobleman secretly bankrolling a racist political party populated by skinheads). Bowles makes a slick and dapper lead, backed by a strong supporting cast, and the show's creators draw a sharp portrait both of Lytton's complicated personal life and the atmosphere of combined camaraderie and competition that marks the newspaper business. The video and audio quality is only adequate—to be expected of source material a quarter-century old (the series was produced in 1985-86 and broadcast on PBS in the 1990s)—but the breezy content easily makes up for the technical deficiencies. Recommended. (F. Swietek)