The Lady and the Highwayman

The Lady and the Highwayman, produced by Lew Grade as part of a series of Barbara Cartland dramatizations in 1987, contains all the ingredients that made her unique style of romantic fiction so successful. The highwayman in question, known as Silver Blade, is actually an aristocratic outlaw played by a youthful Hugh Grant in a bouffant mullet wig. The lady is Panthea (Lysette Anthony), delicate but firm of purpose, who knows her man when she sees him. It's Restoration England, so the frocks are fabulous. But Cartland's pretensions to historical accuracy evaporate when she makes Charles II's mistress, Barbara Castlemaine (Dynasty's Emma Samms), the villainess of the piece.

From there, it's a freewheeling ride of Robin Hood-inspired philanthropy, duplicitous cousins, and some uncomfortably fetishistic shots of the rituals and instruments of execution, although everybody is rescued in time for the romantic soft-focus finale. Full of splendidly self-indulgent performances from the likes of Claire Bloom, John Mills, and Michael York, The Lady and the Highwayman is a feast of thespian ham. Somehow, the cast triumph over the banality of the basic material. --Piers Ford