The locations are centrally important in the drama. In the early episodes of the serial, Charles recounts his years at university in Oxford. Establishing shots of “dreaming spires” and college courtyards paint a picture of opulent, languid, summer days. Likewise, Brideshead Castle, the home of Sebastian and Julia, presents in stark symbolic form the once commanding heights of a now declining aristocracy. The stately home was actually Castle Howard in Yorkshire, the home of the then BBC chair, George Howard. These were deliberate signs of “quality.” Brideshead Revisited visually displayed all the hallmarks of “quality television.” The cost of the serial, which lasted over 12 hours in total, was officially given by Granada television at £4.5 million, but other estimates put the figure closer to £11 million. Granada was committed to capturing an accurate atmosphere of Waugh’s original novel, and the high production values signaled a desire for authenticity. For example, filming on board the ocean liner the Queen Elizabeth II cost £50,000 per eight minutes of film. Other rich backdrops were provided by expensive location filming in Venice, Malta, and the island of Gozo. The large budget was justified by artful creation: “every frame a Rembrandt,” as Mike Scott put it. Viewers, taken with the obvious prestigious connotations of the production, frequently mistook the serial as originating from the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The visual lushness of the serial is matched by the excessive decadence of Sebastian and his various friends. Waugh’s misogyny is revealed, and we are delivered a gathering of aristocratic men accustomed to each other’s company rather than to women. The myth of Edwardian England is fashioned through their clothes and manners. Sebastian is styled in cricket whites, Charles in tweed. The foppishness of their characters is matched by the flow of their loose-fitting wardrobes. All together, we are presented with a 1920s version of the Edwardian dandy—“tastefully” homoerotic. Sebastian’s teddy bear, Aloysius, which Sebastian clutches closely in the early episodes, became a popular icon in the early 1980s of a new breed of white-flannelled men. As the drama unfolds, Charles is caught within a more engulfing family romance. As Charles comes to know the family and comes to love Julia, Sebastian grows more melancholy and the idyllic images of Oxford and Brideshead Castle give way to a more disturbing ambience of loss and mourning.

The elegance and nostalgia, the longing for a bygone “Englishness” of empire and perceived stability led to Brideshead being widely attacked in cultural criticism. It was seen as a “Thatcherite text,” part of a resurgence of regressive nationalism. It was criticized for its slow, reverential pace, for wallowing in inherited wealth, for being a glorified “soap.” Nevertheless, the production is seen internationally as an example of what the British do best, a large-scale “quality” production of television drama.