The folks out at Warner Brothers, as part of their work with the BBC, sent out a copy of The Chronicles of Narnia, and for those of you who can’t wait go finally settle in and check out The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in theaters, then this is absolutely something you’ll want to see.

See, The Chronicles of Narnia is a complete collection–about as complete as it can get, really–of C.S. Lewis’ biggest work, the Narnia series. The four disc set goes on for a little over eight hours, all told, and includes four movies along with some extras. You’ll get the BBC’s late-eighties adaptations of The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair. Every bit of it, every fight, everything is presented here in the grandest BBC dramatic style.

The BBC has always done drama well–spectacularly well. It seems that many nationalities have specialties of film: the Chinese have done some incredible action film, Americans do killer science fiction, the Japanese will blow your mind with their horror, and the British? The British are masters of drama. Subtle in the extreme, and patient enough to tell the difference between dragging things out and keeping things brisk, they’re good at it. Sure, everybody on that list does other things well too, but it just seems like everybody’s got a specialty.  The British are absolutely at home with stuff like this, and it will show.

I haven’t read any Lewis in a good long while, but from what I remember, this is at least within striking distance of faithful to the original novels. That’s definitely a plus here.

Between the closeness of the adaptation and the quality of the overall proceedings, the end result is a very solidly done piece of drama that really doesn’t fail to entertain. You’ve got to be somewhat into the original plot to get the most out of it though, but even if you don’t have any love for this series, you’ll still get some enjoyment out of it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Chronicles of Narnia, a great box set with plenty of value to it, an eight out of ten. Chances are you’ll enjoy it, no matter how you feel about the original source material, and if you’re hoping to get a new generation into the original, you’ll have a great place to start right here.