The Daily Mail's gone upmarket with its DVDs, offering 12 costume dramas which at first sight look like TV retreads and not very sparkling ones either, apart from 'Room With View' that most people must have seen a hundred times. But come back all I said because I've just been watching episode two of Andrew Davies' 'Vanity Fair' which is one of the best adaptations of anything I've ever seen - not just the script, (I do think it gains from the historical backdrop, compared with Jane Austen ) but the music, cast, and photography are all excellent. It comes on two disks, so six hour-long episodes. I've just left David Bradley as Sir Pitt sniffing tearfully at the lace hanky Becky left behind in the crumbling Jacobean pile when she ran off to marry his son Rawdon.A long shot of the marvellous stone manor with the old man's cries echoed by crows, then in the foreground a huge sow waddles past and the fairground music ends the episode. Sad that Miriam Margolies had to expire so soon. Can't wait for Vauxhall Gardens and Waterloo.

If you missed it, and it's on two disks, you'll probably find they've got some left over at Smiths. We had a dodgy disk from Tescos but when my partner went in to Smiths the assistant said they had plenty left. You can only get the disks at Tescos with the newspaper - if you buy it elsewhere you take a voucher to Smiths. There's some Gaskells coming up -North and South which I've seen and Wives and Daughters.

I can't remember where I've seen Bute's wife in something - not Cranford, was it?

Sheila