Brideshead Revisited (PBS). Faithful, sometimes to a fault, to Evelyn Waugh's most popular novel, this visually ravishing series offered a lovely elegy to a time that never was. Eleven episodes that warmed an Anglophile's winter.
CBS Cable. An arts showcase that, in its 14 months on the air, presented some of the medium's finest theater (Sizwe Banzi Is Dead), dance (Twyla Tharp's Confessions of a Cornermaker), film (The Tree of Wooden Clogs), music (a series on Broadway composers) and conversation (Gregory Jackson's Signature). After losing an estimated $30 million, it expired on Dec. 16—one...