So much average

Perfect cast and a good story

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Make no mistake-this is a very very bad adaptation of the classic novel. The 1982 version starring Antony Andrews and Jane Seymour was far more superior to this one. Lets start with the actors. In the book Sir Percy is 31 or 32, Maguerite is 25 and Chauvelin is close to 40. But in the movie each of these characters appear to have aged by two decades. In the novel Sir Percy is a good natured fop who speaks lazily, but Richard E Grant plays him with he energy of an adolescent in a basketball game. And he appears to recite his lines. And Elizabeth McGovern as Marguerite-the most beautiful and cleverest woman in Europe? Not happening. You really want to watch a great adaptation, go for the 1982 one of the same name.

Richard Grant, with his irreverent poetry and in-your-face attitude toward the villains, is absolutely, 100% perfect as THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. The production values are likewise outstanding in this mini-series. If there's one complaint I have, it's that the initial episode lacked one all-important ingredient: SUSPENSE. At no time did we ever really get the impression that Percy was in any real danger; the lack of suspense therefore works against the idea of a man who must remain masked lest he risk his head... (And, not to nitpick, but I must admit that the fact that EVERYONE speaks with an English accent sorta threw me: time and again I found myself hoping someone would silence the arrogant Brits looking to kill our hero... and then I would realize that they were supposed to be FRENCH... A minor quibble, perhaps, but a quibble, nonetheless- like white men in blackface or "Romans" and "Greeks" who speak with English accents in teleseries after teleseries...) A great show. Too bad it didn't last.

I don't know why they even kept the name. How they could call the series 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' after they deviated from the novels so much, I wouldn't have a clue. The character names are the only things they kept, and even then they changed a few of those, and mixed them up, and changed Percy's relationships with them. Admittedly, I only watched about two hours at the most of it, but that was enough for me to realize that the series was nothing like Baroness Orzcy had portrayed her characters, and probably would have been rolling around in her grave when it was filming and airing. Poor lady. I hope that when the next person wants to make a movie/series of the book they don't ruin it as completely as this series did.

As someone who has read all of Baroness Orczy's books and seen most of the movies based on them, I must say that the 1980's version, with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour, was better than this. It was better written and stuck more to the spirit of the story than this one, which seemed to go out of its way to involve people getting shot. This new adaptation is less light-hearted, yet does not have as much depth, either. Although there is some good acting, the actors did not have much to work with. Nice costumes, though.