Reviews

This long ignored TV series from 1964 by the BBC is finally available again.

This used archive film that I have never seen anywhere else. Other histories of the Great War seem to reuse the same old stock footage but not here. The series starts by looking at the state of Europe immediately before the war starts. A great book that compliments this is Barbara Tuchmann's Guns of August. The war itself starts with episode 3 and the pace is relentless there after. So many moving scenes, episode 11 covers the 1916 Battle of Verdun, I doubt anyone could watch this unmoved.

My grandfather's generation fought this terrible conflict, This series shows a little of the terrible cost of this four year long war. I urge you to watch it if you get the chance.

My wife got me watching this as she is into Detective/Crime Drama and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised for several reasons. The use of actors who probably had their heyday twenty years ago was one and the stories are very well written. The show is classed as Drama but there is fun and games in there too.

James Bolam is an actor I have long rated highly and this shows he has not lost his touch. In fact the range of acting skills these people bring to the show make younger actors in the same show look shallow. The team knit well together. They make great use of the fact that they are all retired police officers who can and do ignore rules and protocols to solve supposedly dead cases.

It makes a refreshing change compared to some American shows of the same genre. I strongly recommend it.

This is a very funny series but please don't confuse it with a history of WWI. David Lloyd George (The British Prime Minister) and Douglas Haig (The General commanding the British Army) hated each other and after the war DLG got his memoirs into print very quickly - this led to the myth that the British Army was led by bungling officers and sacrificed for nothing.

This show plays on that myth - In an extremely funny way. Alas - it also helps rob the British Army of its finest victory.

Despite that I love this show - they visit so many of the controversial sides of this conflict in what is at times a side achingly funny way. The end is especially poignant.

I watched this when I was at University and it held a cult status with my friends and I. I bought the tapes then the DVDs when they came out and I still enjoy watching it 25 years later. Some parts of it are still scary and it just goes to show that you don't need huge budgets to make fine TV shows.

The choices of David McCallum and Joanna Lumley for the stars was the hook that got a lot of people watching it but I stayed watching it for the stories - not the stars. There were only six miniseries made. My personal favourite was the one set in a deserted railway station. The ending was a real surprise.

Its a real shame it ended when it did.

Set in and around Leeds in the North of England, Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne are teachers in a typical secondary school. Trevor is a jazz freak whilst Jill is an eco-activist. They stumble across some nefarious goings on in the local community and with the help of some unlikely characters solve a tangled web of corruption.

The humor in this show is absolutely top notch both in situations and dialog and although I have seen it a couple of times, it never seems to get stale. I love this show.

It helps if you have been on the synonymic ride at Disneyland as it serves as the inspiration to the movie. This was good old fashioned fun. I took my children (15 and 13) and they loved it. For me it worked on several levels. There were in jokes for people who had been on the ride, Several nautical jokes which 'sailed' (sorry) over the heads of landlubbers and spectacle galore. We got pushed into going by our 13 year old daughter who rather likes Orlando Bloom but I thought all the cast did a very good job even if Johnny Depp rather stole the show

All in all - better than I expected.

Babylon 5 (B5) appeared on our TV screens in 1993 as a pilot episode. We then had to wait almost a year for it to come back as a series. The show - planned with a finite 5 year life rewrote the plot for TV SciFi. Whatever you expect of the genre, this show does not hit the reset button at the end of every episode. Characters change and grow, come and go and despite some state of the art (for the mid 1990's) special effects, it is the characters and their stories that are the basis for the series.

Season 1 is the introduction and possibly the weakest of the five. This maybe because we didn't know the characters then and they hadn't settled in themselves. Don't give up on Season 1 there, there is a lot going on that will become apparent later on. Season 2 sees something chilling appearing on the scene. Season 3 is the build up to the climax at the start of season 4 and most of the story arc was wrapped up in season 4 as the show's producers dithered about making season 5 which was a real shame. Some new ideas were brought in to flesh out season 5 but this needs to be filled in by reading the Legion of Fire books to really make the story work.

Babylon 5 won two Hugo awards with the Season 2 episode "The Coming of Shadows" and Season 3's "Severed Dreams" I defy anyone to not sit open mouthed when watching Severed Dreams.

All in all B5 is an extraordinary tale. A long novel for TV that really works. The shows should be watched in order to get the full impact but they can be watched individually. My wife is not a lover of Science Fiction but she loves B5 as much as I do. We owe Joe Straczinsky (the show's creator and main writer) a huge thank you for bringing us this.

Maybe I'm a grouch but while this movie is a visual treat and an awesome achievement, it should not be graced with the title as it has far too many unnecessary departures from the book to be considered a "film of the book" These (gratuitous?) changes spoiled the film for me I'm afraid. The Lord of the Rings saga has enough action and story for anyone without inventing bits like Aragorn's fall which did nothing for the story and nearly killed the actor in the process!

I can't see how Return of the King will hang together now as too many events not in the book have changed the story now.

Alas, an opportunity missed.