This is a find. Ken Russell's two 1978 television films about the Wordsworths and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, co-written with Melvyn Bragg, have long been difficult to see. But both are currently on YouTube.
The first, William and Dorothy, is about the relationship between the siblings William and Dorothy Wordsworth. In its most famous scene, Dorothy faints as her brother is married. As a result, he carries her over the threshold rather than his bride.
This is the second film, which centres on Coleridge and his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. As well as David Warner and Felicity Kendall as William and Dorothy from the first film, it stars this blog's hero David Hemmings.
If Hemmings chews the scenery rather, then you feel Coleridge was very like that. And his reading of Frost at Midnight to his infant son is beautiful.
My overall impression of both films is that they are much more coherent than those Russell made for the cinema in the Eighties.
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