S1, E2: Ken Russell's film about Claude Debussy is a curious mixture of narratives that converge to tell the story of a film crew making a film about the life and work of the French composer. The film is somewhat miraculous in that despite containing everything from fantastic wordless sequences to precise elaborations on biographical facts, it does not collapse under the weight of its own cleverness. Starring the irrepressible Oliver Reed (The Devils, Women in Love) as Debussy, the film's mixing of popular consumer culture and the relics of history points to Russell's career-defining attitude, in which the past is made intelligible to the present.