I’m probably not the only girl who loves period dramas. Of course there is a sort of a romantic indulgence in immersing oneself in a story from the times long gone – the attire, the manor houses and palaces, the candlelit drawing rooms, horses instead of cars out on the streets, landscapes still unspoilt by the industrial revolution… Add to this the fact that during my adolescent years we had BBC Prime included in our TV subscription at home so I regularly fed on their literary adaptation miniseries – of course it started with the celebrated Pride and Prejudice and resulted in me reading through the whole legacy of Jane Austen – and you get a perfect costume drama addict.

So, there’s us the addicted girls, and there’s the male personages in our lives, our fathers/brothers/best friends/boyfriends, who inevitably fail to notice the genius behind the making of all our beloved productions. My boyfriend, whom otherwise I consider a person of great taste, feels particularly repulsed by period dramas and normally I dare not even propose watching something like this to him. But! There’s one very lucky coincidence which recently enabled us to have a perfect movie night together, him getting a film by one of his favourite directors – Stanley Kubrick – and me getting a fantastic costume drama. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you – Barry Lyndon!

What a fantastic movie. Great director. The best. Best movie in the world. Seriously!