Silver Spring, MD — Adapted by British hit maker and Emmy® winner Andrew Davies, The Diary of Nobody debuts on DVD from Acorn Media on August 18, 2009. First published in 1892, The Diary of a Nobody has never been out of print, and Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) proclaimed it “the funniest book in the world.” In Andrew Davies (Bleak House, Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones Diary) new adaptation, this comic masterpiece leaps to life in all its quirky glory and is available to U.S. audiences for the first time with its DVD release ($29.99; www.AcornOnline.com).

In a riveting one-man performance, Hugh Bonneville (Iris, Lost in Austen) perfectly captures the small mind and large aspirations of Mr. Charles Pooter, who has become one of the most indelible characters in English literature. Pooter lives an utterly mundane life. But that doesn’t keep him from recording it for posterity—in hilarious detail. Pooter is the prototype for lovable twits from Reginald Perrin and Basil Fawlty (Fawlty Towers) to The Office’s Michael Scott.

Mr. Pooter is a middle-aged, middle-class city clerk in late Victorian England who chronicles his daily domestic and social frustrations. Home improvements, petty humiliations, accidents involving an iron boot scraper, tiffs with his wife Carrie, pained encounters with their mildly rebellious son Lupin, visits from friends Mr. Cummings and Mr. Gowing: all are reported amusingly by the pompous Pooter.

“I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a ‘Somebody’—why my diary should not be interesting,” Mr. Pooter writes. No blogger ever said it better.

Produced in 2007, The Diary of Nobody aired in the U.K. on BBC4.

Headquartered in suburban Washington, D.C., Acorn Media distributes distinctive home video releases to the North American market with a special focus on the best of British television. Acorn’s DVD sets are available from select retailers, catalog companies, and direct from Acorn Media at (888) 870-8047 or www.acornonline.com.