Matthew Sweet presents a chronological overview of the silent era in Britain, from the inventors of the medium who worked in England to the surrender to talkies by 1930. Along the way, Sweet succeeds in dismissing views that Britain was mostly lacking quality productions during the silent era. Sweet does, however, reinforce, by the amount of time he devotes, the history that the UK was the most ahead of the curve in the beginning, roughly from "Rough Sea at Dover" (1895) to "Rescued by Rover" (1905), went into commercial decline with the Great War, and saw an artistic peak of the medium at the end of the 1920s. Perhaps, the beautiful films of the late 1920s in Britain (as elsewhere) hasn't always been recognized, with the exception of those made by Alfred Hitchcock, but that's been changing thanks to historians like Sweet and this program's producer David Thompson.
If you want to purchase this show on DVD, for instance, and regions aren't an issue for you, then get the American Kino one, where it is included with "A Cottage on Dartmoor" (1929); it's better than the short film included on the British DVD. After all, the best and worst part of "Silent Britain" is that it garners interest in these films by showing clips and discussing them: some of them are accessible even on home video, but others are mostly hidden in the archives or lost entirely.
If you want to purchase this show on DVD, for instance, and regions aren't an issue for you, then get the American Kino one, where it is included with "A Cottage on Dartmoor" (1929); it's better than the short film included on the British DVD. After all, the best and worst part of "Silent Britain" is that it garners interest in these films by showing clips and discussing them: some of them are accessible even on home video, but others are mostly hidden in the archives or lost entirely.