This movie is available in its entirety on youtube; and someone has recently upscaled the quality, so it is much easier to watch and appreciate without the distraction of grainy low-res video quality.

Comparing this adaptation of Brave New World to the other two, from 1997 and 2020, this one depicts the future having a lot of hexagons and blocky, multi-level floorplans, and JUMPSUITS! We cannot overlook the classic marker that the setting is either another planet or the future: everyone is wearing matching jumpsuits. Also, the euphemisms in this version were tempered by the prudishness of network TV of the time. There's a little wink every time they are talking about the fact that the 'civilized' are non-monogamous and are screwing each other, but even that become laborious to decode at times. When Lenina is left behind in the savage lands, we are told how the other women mistreat her because she immediately starts seducing and screwing all their men, but we are not really shown how she interacts with the men at all. I would have liked to have seen her flighty, naïve flirtations' effect on the savage men.

While this version, evidently, is more faithful to events of the novel itself, it fails at creatively adapting the setting to give viewer more of a sense that the brave new world follows from the world they were living in at the time. The cluttered soundstage looks more like a warehouse and the production design reflects a very low budget or a total lack of imagination or self-awareness. There was some thought into casting, for example, the Alphas were tall and handsome and the Betas were pudgy and unattractive. But then someone decided to depict the lower Gammas and Deltas as practically sub-human creatures. I understand they were making the point about genetic manipulation and perhaps they were closer to the way there were in the book, but the grey masks the Deltas had really took me out of the story and just made me think about the poor production quality despite having been made by a large studio for network primetime television.

Some of the actors seemed to understand the parody/satire at the heart of the text while others almost took themselves and the 'story' too seriously and therefore missed the mark. Bud Cort is probably the best actor, doing a lot of the work for the cast, but he's still hindered by stunted dialogue and the undeveloped characters with which he interacts. I've never seen Keir Dullea act in anything other than 2001: A Space Odyssey and I suppose it was because he wasn't really that good of an actor after all. Kristoffer Tabori gives John the Savage a loopy, almost simple disposition--even as he quotes Shakespeare to the 'civilized' who cannot understand it, he does it almost robotically and without showing us what he THINKS without going broad and overacting his frustrations.

Overall, I appreciated the fact that narrative more accurately depicts the events of the novel than the other two adaptations. However, I was constantly taken out of the story and focused on all the 'late 1970s' of it all. The costumes and set were too silly and lacked any sort of thought other than being the cheapest to do. Granted, this was made just after Star Wars had become a new standard for science fiction, yet it was still a product of the era when jumpsuits and infinity sound stages filled with hexagonal blocks and arbitrary levels were very typical of science-fictional depictions of the future. Absolutely no realism at all. On the other extreme, the 'savages' are shown wearing furs and yet still living in the ruins of 'our present world.' This is a constant annoyance of mine when it comes to production design like this--if they ALL wearing furs, then there has to be people catching and skinning animals and using various hide-tanning accoutrement and thus, at minimum, we need to SEE hides tied up and drying in the sun. I've read that the novel's depiction of the 'savage lands' were simply descriptions of the reservations of Native Americans and how they were regarded in the 1930s.

Despite my negative attitude on a lot of aspects of this production, I still recommend it for anyone interested in Brave New World. I hadn't read the novel and watched the 2020 adaption on Peacock streaming, then I watched the 1997, and after that watched this version. Taking all three together, I guess I actually appreciate the three different visions of 'the future' of each era's production as each reflect the values of their time. I'm glad I watched this version.