Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

blackie_nile One of the best historical dramatisations I've ever seen: McKidd's passion is palpable, as are the blood and gore of the Catholic purges when James I came to power, the dust and dirt on costumes, the primitivism of the lifestyles--all seem as realistic as could possibly be. Of course, we have nothing but the literature of the time to document what life was really like, but this seems to me a fine imagining of the vulgarities, barbarisms, discomforts, passions and violence of the time. I can't think of a better film to introduce young people to the history of this turbulent period--it will certainly grab their attention!

edjavega 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 *****

MsKris You'd think that combining a good director, excellent actors and fascinatinghistorical events would make for an entertaining miniseries -- but you'd bewrong. The writing stank, the history was worse than inaccurate, and I canbarely believe excellent actors such as McKidd and Carlyle were able to deliver some of their lines with a straight face. Historical inaccuracies aside, the story itself was delivered so disjointedly it was downright choppy -- almost as if an entirely different director and writer made each half. Skip this one.

paul2001sw-1 Given the pronounced anti-Catholic bias of most contemporary English history, one might think that any attempt to redress the balance might be welcomed. Alas, Jimmy McGovern's drama, 'Gunpowder, Treason and Plot', proves this not to be the case. Its greatest problem is its unfortunate tendency to encapsulate complex political issues in slogans, and those slogans, in turn, in characters - the portrayal of John Knox (who does little more than storm about and utter his most famous quote) exemplifies this. This, and the number of historical liberties taken (James I, for example, discovers the Gunpowder Plot in person) make the story a less accurate guide to the past than even 'Braveheart'.The series is not helped either by some substandard acting. Clemence Posey, with her bizarre French-American-Scottish accent, is mostly inaudible as Mary Queen of Scots and seems to take most of the cues for her performance from Mila Jovovitch's disastrous turn as Joan of Arc in 'Messenger'. Sira Stampe is robotic as James I's wife, while Robert Carlyle's James is as unconvincing as he is unhinged. Also detracting from our enjoyment are the understaffed battle scenes, the histrionic tone, and a decidedly anachronistic portrayal of sexuality.Surprisingly, given McGovern's own politics, there's almost no hint of republicanism here, although within a few decades Britain was engulfed by a civil war that disputed absolutely the relevance of monarchy: perhaps this is ignored because it was a Protestant rebellion. Instead, we get a boring, linear drama of good queen Mary, bad queen Elisabeth and mad king James. I'm still certain that somewhere, behind the propaganda, there's an interesting story - how did hatred of Catholocism spread so rapidly when only a handful of years previously, everyone in England was Catholic? But this film does little to open one's eyes.