Great DVDs you should see: Conspiracy

“Conspiracy” is like one of those great “Twelve Angry Men” style movies of the 1950s and conspiracy11960s, in that it’s a talky drama set in a single room for most of the movie, and yet manages to be absolutely fascinating because of the sheer quality of the script and the acting. Made jointly by HBO and the BBC, the story is set around the Wannsee conference of 1942, where the Nazis made the decisions about how to technically achieve the “final solution” against the Jews. The script is based on a copy of the minutes captured after the war, and what really stuns about the movie is the tip-toeing around the subject by its participants, who know what they are doing but are concerned how history will judge them and, bizarrely, whether what they are doing is actually legal under German law.

Great performances from Kenneth Branagh, the always watchable Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth in particular, and a masterclass in taking a complex subject and making it both dramatic and accessible.