Gertrude Bell, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day, shaped the destiny of Iraq after WWI in ways that still reverberate today.

The 10th Kingdom is an American fairytale fantasy miniseries written by Simon Moore and produced by Britain’s Carnival Films, Germany’s Babelsberg Film und Fernsehen, and the USA’s Hallmark Entertainment. It depicts the adventures of a young woman and her father after they are transported from Manhattan, New York, through a magical mirror into a parallel world of fairy tales, magical beings, evil stepmothers and self-discovery.

The miniseries was initially broadcast over five nights in two-hour episodes on NBC, beginning February 27, 2000. It garnered good reviews but very poor ratings. It won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design in 2000.

Based on the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain, Mike Newell’s Dance With a Stranger (1985) concentrates on Ellis’s (Richardson) short-lived relationship with motor-racing driver David Blakely (Rupert Everett).

This multiple-Oscar-winning film by Roman Polanski is an exquisite, richly layered adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. A strong-willed peasant girl (Nastassja Kinski, in a gorgeous breakthrough) is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge, which Polanski unfolds with deliberation and finesse. With its earthy visual textures, achieved by two world-class cinematographers—Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret) and Ghislain Cloquet (Au hasard Balthazar)—Tess is a work of great pastoral beauty as well as vivid storytelling.