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I just saw this on DVD for the first time since it's initial run on PBS a quarter century ago. Amazingly, it's as good as I remember it, mixing comedy, romance and drama with a marvelous cast and terrific dialogue. I'd say it's close to as good as "Flickers," a companion series also written by Roy Clarke-- the biggest advantage that series has are two full-throttle performances by Bob Hoskins and Frances de la Tour. "Pictures" doesn't go quite that broad.

If you see it, pay special attention to the score: not only is it one of the best evocations of the 20's sound around, but the composer created subtle variations on the basic music for the end titles of each of the seven episodes, each reflecting the story in some way. Listen for the snippet of "Hungarian" music at the end of Episode 5.

And watch for Anton Rodgers as the splendidly boiled ham, Godfrey Forbes Lawson.

Biggest drawback: Harry Towb as Ziggy Olman starts out funny but just starts to grate after a while. Not much of a drawback.

Lots of fun.

This film was a disappointment, except for one or two moments (the singing cops/the singing crooks, Grandpa Tulip). It felt like a Marx Brothers movie starring Zeppo and Gummo. There's a great, frothy lightness to the film and the constant sense that something really, really amusing is just about to happen-- but it never actually does. I'd class this picture as "interesting," but not really good except as a curiosity.

Okay, I love Bill Macy, who's invariably fun to watch, with those pouchy eyes and that "please don't kick me again" expression-- or maybe it's "please don't kick me again so hard." And I love Donald Westlake, one of the best writers of light capers on the scene today. Westlake wrote the novel on which this is based, which I seem to recall reading as "Enough," not "A Travesty," which is what it says in the credits. The combination of these two guys is inspired, all the better in that Macy co-wrote the adaptation and tailored the lead precisely to his acting strengths. Macy just looks like a typical Westlake hero-- only, as one of the other characters points out, he really can't be the hero if he's killed his girlfriend, even accidentally. And he's not really the hero, I guess, although you do sort of root for him. Macy plays Jerry Thorpe, a not-very-nice TV film critic, whose attempts to evade the consequences of committing an accidental murder get more and more involved as the plot thickens. It's an anti-Columbo, where we follow the criminal, not the cop, and wonder when and how he's going to blow it. Macy's stayed true to the book, adding a lot of character touches and a couple of nifty flourishes. He even includes a funny reference to one of his own previous pictures, "Searching for Bobby Fischer." I guess, for me, the fun was just watching Macy have so much fun in a leading role-- like Steve Buscemi, he's a terrific character actor who rarely gets the chance to carry a film. He carries this one, and I hope to see him carry more.