Fantastic!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

I loved every minute of this show! Both episodes were action packed and full of intrigue, just as the real events must have been 500 years ago! The acting was excellent, and the accents were superb! Mr. Robert Carlyle as James I of England and VI of Scotland was especially good, as was Catherine McCormack as Elizabeth I! An A+ from me!

As a lover of British History, and a as fan of some of this movie/mini series' more prominent actors i.e. Robert Carlise, Kevin McKidd and Richard Coyle, I was looking forward to this adaptation of the circumstances leading up to the events of November 5th 1605 with great anticipation. However, I was somewhat disappointed. It was not so much the historical inaccuracies, these are now somewhat expected, as it seems these days History just isn't interesting enough just to be shown as it actually happened, and needs dumbing down or tweaking.I was more disappointed at the overall tone of the piece as it is openly biased in favour of the catholics and as a result history seems to have been completely rewritten to make England, Queen Elizabeth I, Kinf James I and every other protestant in the world evil conspirators and murderers. In the same vein we are shown how Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby and the rest of his gang of Catholic TERRORISTS, were really only martyrs to a great cause and were forced into this action by a disfigured, cruel, oppressive and homosexual sex predator of a King, who lied to the people and deserved to get his evil arse blown to smithereens anyway.It is also seems to be anti-English and Pro-Scottish which doesn't make sense at all as the disagreements between England and Scotland had nothing at all to to with the Gunpowder Plot and it seems the entire first half of this three hour lie-fest highlighted the 'plight' of Mary, Queen of Scots just to justify the anti-English sentiment.Of course it never mentions once the lying, plotting and conniving she herself did against her cousin Elizabeth, which bought about her 'reluctant' execution by the English Queen.Apart from using it to work in some anti-English propaganda, the whole Mary, Queen of Scots story line wasn't needed. It took place 40 years before Guy Fawkes and his cronies tried to blow up Parliament and was just a waste of time and money. Its not like it even set the scene, the events of the 1560's and the events of 1605 are completely unrelated. I'm sure the public would have much preferred to see a more accurate three hour in depth story about 1605 than anything else.I just feel as a protestant and an Englishman, that this film went too far in it's inaccurate portrayals and political sentiments against me and my kind and cannot justify the openly political and religious stance it made by portraying the catholics of 16th and 17th century Britain as the nice guys of the piece. It is on a par with portraying the Nazis as humanists with morals and Al-Qaeda terrorists as brave soldiers with just cause. I feel that had a programme, film, play, book or song directed so much negative feeling and bile towards any other country, religion, race, colour, creed or faction, it would have been banned as racist and bigoted, and wouldn't even have seen the light of day. I myself am not racist against any country or religion, especially not against my fellow Britons, my Scotttish and Welsh brethren, it just hurts me that even now in the 21st Century these two great countries still feel significantly insecure that they have to make such jibes and comments towards the English as they feel it raises their position somewhat.To be honest devolution hasn't helped. It has done more to recreate the politics and feeling of the era depicted here than anything else, and unfortunately as a result, the division between our three countries is now growing wider, and the undertones shown in this production substantiates this fact.As far as Scotland and Wales are concerned the United Kingdom of Great Britain is sadly no more

It was expected that this series would take an anti-Catholic tone, after all, it appears most of England had grown rabidly anti-Catholic (not without reason) at this time.But in scenes where the Catholic plotters were planning to blow up the Parliament, it was a bit disturbing to have the script make the characters use terms such as "martyrs to the cause" and decide that, if innocent Catholic bystanders were to be killed by their plot, that was "alright", since they would be dying for the Church or something like that.Personally, I don't think Fawkes and company thought in those lines, since they needed all the Catholics they could get, since they were in a minority in Britain. Were the producers making the Catholic plotters appear like something out of today's Al-Qaeda, to make the film more "familiar" to today's audiences? The Protestants don't appear too angelic either. The ending sequence where King James I appeared totally mad or ruthless before Parliament, talking about unspeakable punishments for the plotters who only wanted "tolerance" - well, that sort of appeared like the producers were trying to get people to equate the King's behavior to Washington's response to 9/11 and come out thinking that the USA's reaction was quite over the top too. A political statement if there was one.And where did they get it that James I may have been homosexual and had a hard time to have a "normal" relationship with his wife? The historical James I had 9 children by Queen Anne.The point is, costume dramas have all the potential to be great dramas, without having to "adapt" the script to make the historical characters act and speak in a way that would make them look contemporary.At any rate, it was interesting TV fare. *** out of *****

As soon as I saw the text "Written by Jimmy McGovern" flash up on the promos, I knew that this would be something special. Having watched the first season of McGovern's "Cracker" I knew that this would be history with true grit, venomous dialogue, and buckets of conflict. I wasn't disappointed.Judging by the other comments some people found McGovern's style too harsh, that he belittles the both Royal family and the Protestant and Catholic branches of church, and overuses sex and violence. It's a fair criticism, but so many over-starched interpretations of British history have been made that this gritty drama becomes a breath of fresh air.The show is evenly divided into two parts, both riveting stories. The first is the reign of Queen Mary I of Scotland, a French Catholic girl now ruling over Protestant Scotland. Clemence Poesy turns in a brilliant performance as the young queen faced with her conniving half-brother Lord James, Queen Elizabeth I of England, her misogynistic husband Lord Darnley, and her brash suitor the Lord Bothwell. The whole story is turbulent, as a state of war with the English gradually precipitates.The second part is much higher drama, though. It is concerned with Mary's son James I, a repugnant, bitter cripple, who promises the Catholics tolerance, and then reneges on his promise at the behest of the manipulative Lord Cecil, one of the most powerful men in England. This proves the catalyst for the famous attempted bombing of the houses of parliament on November 5, lead by the ruthless Spaniard Guy Fawkes.It is true that McGovern revolves the entire show about the us-and-them viewpoint of the Catholic and Protestant, BUT this works to great effect. Emphasising the conflict in this war really ups the ante for the drama, making for some very high-octane television. Add to this brilliant performances by Robert Carlyle, Tim McInnerny, Kevin McKidd, Sam Troughton, and Michael Fassbender (Playing Guy Fawkes as a silent Clint Eastwood type delightfully)This is, without a doubt, the greatest telemovie I've ever seen. However, if you're at all squeamish this definitely isn't for you: this is history with the filthy bits left in for a change...