Please don't spend money on this.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

They don't make adaptations like this any more - no doubt for cost reasons and a lack of imagination and bravery at the TV companies. 7 hours of solid drama, yet full of incidental humour and some very fine characterisations.Unfortunately it is flawed, and the flaws make it just very good viewing rather than the excellent series it should have been. The biggest flaws to my mind are: 1 The decision to replace Nick and his wife by new actors for Film 4 was totally wrong. Nick ages far too much in too short a space of time, and looks completely different. This creates a real problem of believability.2 Still on ageing, some of the actors are 'aged' very well, whilst others (especially the ladies and Odo) seem hardly any different as the decades progress.3 Film 4 is by far the weakest, though to be fair this reflects the books on which it is based. Perhaps it should have been cut further and the earlier years given even greater prominence.4 Despite a great deal of pruning, there are still too many characters and insufficient narration for non-aficionados of the books to be sure all the time of who is who.5 The scenes often seem to be a succession of dramatic deaths - difficult to avoid with the way the story has to be condensed, but very predictable nonetheless.However, it's still pretty good, and light years removed from much of the dumbed-down drama on TV today.

Once again BBC show us the pride of British drama, giving us a full account of this incredible Anthony Powell saga. Not only does it contain a rich historical scenery, but also something of a philosophical clue of how life actually works. Starting off in Uni environment, we get to know young Nick Jenkins - a man in the middle in a circle of friends. Moving on in life is inevitably also a break up from this social network. As the inter war periods goes on, Nick meets his old friends (and friends of friends) in the most unexpected ways. Ever so slowly a pattern emerge, that is somehow life itself - we move around, get married, divorced, change political opinions in a series of shorter and longer encounters. As Poussin's painting has it - A Dance to the Music of Time. A true masterpiece.

It's possibly a bit late to post this question but as I have only now managed to see the video, here goes anyway. Does anyone know WHY it was deemed necessary to replace James Purefoy and Emma Fielding as Nicholas Jenkins and his wife in the last film of the series? Most of the other characters were left to age, convincingly or otherwise, even Widmerpool himself. Though Joanna David did at least bear a tolerable resemblance to how Isobel (Fielding) might have looked in later life, John Standing, excellent actor though he is, didn't look remotely like an aged James Purefoy. The changeover broke the continuum of events for me and was a constant source of irritation. What was behind this strange, irrational decision?

Hands down, this is the best miniseries or film that I have ever seen. Everything about this miniseries was my cup of tea: the clothes, the scenery, the dialogue, the many handsome actors, just everything. I had broken down and bought myself one of those PAL video players as so many video tapes that I wanted to see were only available in PAL format. As an American NTSC videotape user, it was hard for me to reconcile the purchase of the special PAL VCR, until I saw this miniseries in all its glory. What an absolute confection! I wanted to be a part of the story. I find it hard to believe that this miniseries is not available to the American market in NTSC format. This miniseries far surpasses Brideshead Revisited, among others. Although Simon Russell Beal certainly did a phenomenal acting job, I also thought James Purefoy displayed alot of range and depth particularly in the difficult role of an observer narrator. I really can't say enough about how marvelous this miniseries was! It was worth every penny spent to see this miniseries!