Originally, producer Derek Granger asked Anthony Andrews to play the role of Charles Ryder. Andrews, however, felt he was better suited for the part of Sebastian Flyte. Jeremy Irons, Granger's first choice for Sebastian, preferred to play Ryder, so the two actors swapped roles.
Castle Howard, which was used as the location for much of the series, was owned by George Howard - who at the time was the chairman of the BBC, a rival of the network airing the series. He nonetheless agreed not only to allow his castle to be used, but served as a technical advisor and supplied many of the props for the production, while also advising the filmmakers in ways to avoid incorrect portrayals of life in such an environment.
The ship in the storm scenes is actually unused footage from The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
Production was delayed for several months by a strike of ITV technicians in 1979. When filming resumed, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg was no longer available because of commitments in America so he was replaced by Charles Sturridge for the scenes filmed in Oxford and many of the ones filmed at Castle Howard ("Brideshead").
During the enforced break in filming caused by the ITV technicians' strike in 1979, it was decided by the cast and producer that John Mortimer's original six-hour script did not fully do justice to the book and that too much had been left out, so he was asked to write additional scenes bringing the total length to 13 hours.
When filming the scenes during the storm on board the ocean liner, the small cabin sets were made to rock from side to side, but this could not be done for the much larger dining room set, so producer Derek Granger stood on a chair behind the camera and waved a stick from side to side to indicate to the cast which way to lurch and sway.
Laurence Olivier was offered his choice of roles in either Lord Marchmain or Edward Ryder (which ultimately went to John Gielgud). Olivier picked Lord Marchmain, but later regretted the choice as he realized that Edward Ryder was actually a much stronger role.
Lord Brideshead 'Bridey':
You're fond of wine?
Charles Ryder:
Yes, very.
Lord Brideshead 'Bridey':
[pompously] I wish *I* were. It's such a bond with other men. At Oxford I tried to get drunk once or twice - but I didn't enjoy it.
[Sebastian and Cordelia exchange glances and crease up with silent laughter]
Cordelia Flyte:
If you weren't an agnostic I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black god-daughter.
Charles Ryder:
Nothing would surprise me about your religion.
Cordelia Flyte:
It's a new thing that a priest started last term. You send five bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you. I have got six black Cordelias. Isn't that lovely?
[Ryder looks utterly bewildered]
[to Charles Ryder]
Anthony Blanche:
If you knew anything of sexual psychology, you would know that nothing could give me keener pleasure than to be m-m-m-manhandled by you meaty boys - ecstacy of the *naughtiest* kind.
[Cordelia has been telling Charles that she has recently met Sebastian living a dissolute and drunken life in a Tunisian monastery after his lover has killed himself]
Charles Ryder:
It's not what one would have foretold. I suppose he doesn't suffer.
Cordelia Flyte:
Oh, yes, I think he does. One has no idea what the suffering may be - to be as maimed as he is. No dignity, no power of will. No-one is truly holy without suffering.
Cordelia Flyte:
Tell me, Charles. When you first met me last night, did you think "Poor Cordelia. Such an engaging child, grown into a plain and pious spinster, full of good works"? Did you think "thwarted"?
Charles Ryder:
[chuckles] Yes, I did. But now I'm not so sure.
Cordelia Flyte:
It's funny, you know. That's the word I thought for you and Julia when I saw you up in the nursery with Nanny - "thwarted passion", I thought.
[at Brideshead Hall during the army's occupation of it in World War II]
Lieutenant Hooper:
Did you say you knew this place before?
Charles Ryder:
Yes. Very well. It belongs to friends of mine.
Lieutenant Hooper:
It doesn't make any sense. One family in a place this size - what's the use of it?
Charles Ryder:
I suppose Brigade find it useful.
Lieutenant Hooper:
That's not what it's built for, though, is it?
Charles Ryder:
No, it's *not* what it was built for. Maybe that's one of the pleasures of building. Like having a son. Wondering how he'll grow up. I don't know. I've never built anything. And I've forfeited the right to watch my son grow up. I'm homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless.
[in the Chapel at Brideshead Hall - final voiceover]
Charles Ryder:
The chapel showed no ill effects of its long neglect. The paint was as fresh and bright as ever. And the lamp burned once more before the altar. I knelt and said a prayer - an ancient, newly-learned form of words. I thought that the builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend. They made a new house with the stones of the old castle. Year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness, until, in sudden frost, came the Age of Hooper. The place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing. Quo modo sedet sola civitas - vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And yet, I thought, that is not the last word. It is not even an apt word - it is a dead word from ten years back. Something quite remote from anything the builders intended had come out of their work and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played. Something none of us thought about at the time. A small red flame, a beaten copper lamp of deplorable design, re-lit before the beaten copper doors of a tabernacle. This flame, which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out: the flame burns again for *other* soldiers far from home - farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians. And there I found it that morning, burning anew among the old stones.
Version of
Brideshead Revisited (2008)
- Same source material.
Remade as
Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Featured in
"Zomergasten: (#11.2)" (1998)
- A fragment of this mini-series is shown in this episode
The 100 Greatest TV Moments (1999) (TV)
Spoofed in
Stiff Upper Lips (1998)