It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

You do not see series like this anymore.The Plot is superb, the actors are fantastic, and the "Last Days of the Empire atmosphere" is actually very good.If you are looking for some action, this is not your TV serial. It is a drama, and it is slow. However, the characters are superbly developed, and are extremely real.The story goes very deep into issues like racism, elitism, and the fears of a crumbling and hypocritical society. For some reason, the story also touches sexual repression, homosexuality, and sadism. There are even some veiled hints of lesbianism. While sex is not really the main theme, it is a recurrent part of the atmosphere in the series. The story starts with the life of a young, eccentric and idealist white & aristocratic British woman who is raped by a gang of Indian thugs. As you can imagine, the British establishment does not take it well and soon a scapegoat is found and blamed. The Scapegoat is subjected to a sadistic torture by a psychopathic British policeman who later joins the military. Funny enough, the British torturer is a repressed homosexual who enjoys inflicting pain and gets relief having sex with young Indian guys "Bazaar Style".Terry Porter as the Russian Count is by far the best character of the whole series. I take my hat before such a superb actor. Again, the Russian Count is described in the series as an "European Pederast".However, as I have said before, it is not really about sex. It is just a portrait of British colonial society in the last days of the empire. Very good, highly recommendable.

This mammoth series does a beautiful job of bringing Paul Scott's novels 'The Raj Quartet' to the screen.The scene is the period of time at the end of the British Raj, the characters are well drawn and believable (particularly Tim Pigott-Smith as the racist and intolerant Captain Merrick, a complex character, and Art Malik as the intellectual Indian Hari Kumar). Scott's novel was an engrossing read and 'Jewel' does it proud.One of those series which goes in all sorts of different directions before it comes to its moving and surprising conclusion. One of the great pieces of British TV drama.

There's a small scene in the first 2 hour episode of Jewel in the Crown about 80 minutes in. Susan Wooldridge, a gangly maladroit, clearly not cut out for India, is sleeping. The long awaited rain wakes her and she gets up and walks out onto the balcony. The obsessional loving care and artistry that is evident in just this single minute tell you everything you need to know about the quality of Jewel in the Crown. The set and the lighting on the sleeping figure momentarily transforms the character who will later be known, pejoratively as "that Manners girl" into the Diana-like beauty she always imagined she would become. Wooldridge is convincingly asleep and wakes naturally, and surprise, delight and relief register on her face as she revels in the feel of rain on her face. Nothing is out the book. It's all fresh, original, new. A great piece of acting by Wooldridge, never surpassed or even approached by all the other actors and actresses who have had to play this popular little scene, present in so many other movies. A great piece of directing, lighting, scene setting and costume design.Aside from this one, there are 649 other minutes and the same care and devotion is taken with all of them. In the episode "The Mughal Room", Sara Layton and Guy Perron spend Guy's last afternoon exploring the Governor's Summer residence at Pankot. 7 minutes go by without any dialogue in this little elegy for the cobwebbed glory of the Raj before they settle down in one of the bedrooms to make love. You won't find anything else like it in mainstream television. Very hard to do but very beautiful. But then the whole story is excellent, beautifully paced, tragic, funny, pathetic, illuminating and exciting by turns. I've watched it a number of times and I never want it to end.It really is the best drama series ever made.

Very disappointing series that had some potential. As the series continues, it increasingly becomes a forum for homosexual politics. Also, largely a woman's movie, in the the first half at least. The whole series revolves around a man you are encouraged to hate, then feel sorry for and then hate again. Even his demise, which you are hoping for by the end of the first of 15 episodes, is disappointing. The British are made out to be thoroughly disagreeable throughout most of the series. Very little history, geography and politics of India, which I had hoped to see. The black and white documentary interjections are out of place and several don't make any sense at all, for example, D-Day - this is a movie about India, not about the invasion of Normandy! It is a loathsome and ponderous work with little redeeming qualities. Stay away in droves.