Revisiting an Edwardian classic

Brideshead Revisited

, the 1981 mini-series that turned lead actors Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews into stars, looks as fresh today as when it was first broadcast on Britain's ITV network. It's fresher still on Acorn Media's three-disc Blu-ray collection,

Brideshead Revisited: 30th Anniversary Edition

(

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$69.99; not rated).

Adapted from Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel and produced by the great Derek Granger, the 11-hour epic spanned two decades and charted the intense bond forged between two Oxford students. Sebastian Flyte (Andrews) is an idle man of leisure, a child of immense wealth, who grapples with his strict Catholic upbringing and his latent homosexual desires. Charles Ryder (Irons) is an aspiring painter from an upper-middle-class background, who is practical, down-to-earth, and immensely ambitious.

Like Upstairs, Downstairs, which aired from 1971 through 1975, Brideshead cemented its British and American audiences' fascination with Edwardian England. (It persists today, as the success of 2010's Downton Abbey shows.)

"Audiences seem to love that particular chunk of time," says Andrews, 63, from his home in London. Brideshead "dealt with an extremely romantic, privileged time, and if you were on the right side - or even the wrong side - of the class divide, it was an extraordinary, exciting time."

Andrews says Brideshead was born during a unique period in the British television industry.

"It was an era of unprecedented productivity," says the actor, "and a time when a number of immensely talented producers were given complete creative control."

The show's greatness, Andrews says, is in large part because of an unforeseen event: An ITV workers' strike that halted the production after two months. "We expected to be canceled," he says. "In fact, the opposite happened."

The strike gave Granger the time to expand the script from a six-hour to an 11-hour series, which in turn inspired the network to double his budget.

"That piece of history is the reason why Brideshead was the kind of piece it was," Andrews says. "And it almost wasn't."

Medea.

Italian film maestro Pier Paolo Pasolini somehow coaxed opera legend Maria Callas to star in her first and only film, a very Pasolini-esque take on Euripides'

Medea

in 1969, and it is due Tuesday from One Entertainment. An iteration of the story of Jason and the Argonauts, the beautifully restored film is an often gruesome, if philosophically astute, meditation on religious sacrifice. (Alas, Callas doesn't sing.)

www.entertainmentonegroup.com/; $29.98 DVD; $39.98 Blu-ray; not rated

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Made six years after Medea, and featuring some of the same themes, Pasolini's controversial adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's 1785 tome, The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinism, is no less shocking today.

Abounding in painterly, if disturbing, imagery, the film is about four men who vow to explore the depth and breadth of sexual experience. They lock themselves up in a castle for four months with 46 young men and women whose lives they eventually destroy. The Criterion Collection's immaculately restored Blu-ray edition features two documentaries, video interviews with the director, and a booklet of essays. www.criterion.com/; $39.95; not rated

Underbelly: The Trilogy.

An amazing achievement in pulp-crime storytelling, this Australian TV series, which debuted in 2008 and is now in its fourth season, tells the real-life story of the wars that raged between underworld gangs and the police over three decades from the 1970s through the 2000s.

This 29-hour, 12-disc box set due Tuesday from One Entertainment features the series' first three seasons. Epic in scope, albeit a bit more explicit, shocking, and sleazy - and a whole lot more fun - than HBO's The Sopranos, Underbelly takes a laser-sharp look at the nature of loyalty, love, pride, revenge, and justice. www.entertainmentonegroup.com/; $99.98; not rated

Tanner Hall. Tatiana von Fürstenberg, 40, daughter of famed fashion designers Diane and Egon von Fürstenberg, has been featured in small roles in a couple of very cool films, including 1992's Dracula and Light Sleeper. She makes her directorial debut with this moving, semiautobiographical, coming-of-age story about four girls in a boarding school. It features Brie Larson, Amy Ferguson, Amy Sedaris, Chris Kattan, and Rooney Mara, who stars in the new The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. www.anchorbayentertainment.com/; $26.98 DVD; $29.99; rated R

Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series. Matt Smith's particularly madcap Doctor takes his pals, Amelia Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) to America in the opening episodes of Season 6, a collection out from BBC Video. Adventures follow, including the birth of Amelia and Rory's miracle baby - who grows up to be a sexy, if psychotic, assassin. www.bbcAmerica- Shop.com; $79.88 DVD; $89.98 Blu-ray; not rated.