A TV Dante

Peter Greenaway and Tom Philips have together created the single most visionary piece of television ever broadcast. Those who complain about the lack of 'cinematic grammar' are missing the very point - it's like an illuminated manuscript, but one created using the most cutting edge (for its time) technology, and employing a post-modern aesthetic that allows anything and everything to be thrown into the mixture, be it high medieval poetry or today's breaking news images. Grainy stock footage of blips moving on a radar screen is hauntingly used to depict angels passing through the heavenly spheres - a Muyrbridge sequence of a powerful boxer descending a staircase becomes Christ's harrowing of Hell - Dante's internalised world is rendered as a modern ultra-scan screen - desperate escapees attempting to flee across the Berlin wall become, literally, souls in Hell.

The actors performing Dante, Virgil and Beatrice give superb readings of the poem, whilst experts and commentators provide moving footnotes just as in a printed edition of the Inferno. The elaborate and meticulous word-paintings of Tom Phillips are beautifully interwoven with the bold filmic images of Peter Greenaway, creating a unique and inspirational experience that shows up just how thin and watery most of what passes for TV actually is.

A masterpiece.