Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #961 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-08-23
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Number of discs: 7
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 6
• Running time: 999 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Forsyte Saga is often cited as the first television miniseries; it wasn't, but there's no question that it was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in 1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome.

Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters--perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. --Tom Keogh

DVD Description
The Forsyte Saga, in telling the remarkable story of a nouveau riche English family, introduced the world to a new kind of TV. Millions of people devoted the next half year of their lives to following the frank treatment of all the sins, foibles and peccadillos of the Forsytes and their circle. The passing decades can never the erase the memory of their extraordinary evenings with the Forsytes: Kenneth More as Jo, the philosophical outsider; Eric Porter as Soames, the grasping man of property; Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene, "born to be loved and to love" and in later episodes, Susan Hampshire in an Emmy-winning performance as Fleur, Soame's 'restless' daughter. With 150 characters, 2000 separate costumes and over 100 sets, this sprawling yet intimate saga continues to move, provoke and entrance viewers today.

Synopsis
An epic television mini-series, this 1960's BBC production was avidly followed by audiences around the world. The literary adaptation follows the Victorian pride of the Forsyte family through the scandals, traumas and mistakes of the family, particularly involving the pent-up Soames (Eric Porter) and his bohemian brother Jolyon (Kenneth More). Following an unsuccessful marriage to caged-bird Irene (Nyree Dawn Porter) culminating in a shocking rape scene--Soames' cold ways change when his child grows up to be a captivating young woman (Susan Hampshire) who carries on the family tradition of strong-willed rebellion. Based on John Galsworthy's Nobel Prize winner. Contains all 26 episodes.

Customer Reviews

This series has a timeless quality. First rate production.
I saw this many years ago on television and it is as facinating now as it was then. I even forgot that I was watching it in black and white!

If you are a reader of good books you will know that screen versions are usually disappointing. Of course, there is not all the detail but having read the books the timing and content of this presentation is accurate enough to draw you through the epic saga without the usual irritations of "screen licence". It is one of the very few book-to-screen productions I would highly recommend - the others are also BBC Drama Productions.

A TV Serial that is High Art
Now available on 7 DVDs, comprising all 26 episodes plus several hours of additional features, this most celebrated and splendid of BBC TV serials was the brainchild of adapter and producer Donald Wilson. Its world-wide success is known to all, but some might not be aware of the following: -

Donald Wilson was denied funds to produce it for ten years. Had there been a delay of a further year the series would have been filmed in colour, as he wished, rather than black and white.

The first of the John Galsworthy novels on which the series is based contains almost no dialogue. BBC script writers supplied the dialogue that helped make the ten siblings in the eldest Forsyte generation so memorable.

Galsworthy intended the Forsytes to represent the rapaciousness, greed and snobbery of the English upper middle class. In this adaptation they are much more endearing.

Being filmed in black and white made it possible to interpolate archival film of Queen Victoria’s funeral procession and of combat scenes from WW1.

Joseph O’Conor who plays the part of Old Jolyon was two years younger than Kenneth More who plays his son.

Eric Porter and Margaret Tyzack, who play Soames Forsyte and his sister Winifred, are in each episode and are required to age almost 50 years.

Although never credited, the music that opens and closes each episode is the first movement, “Halcyon Days”, from the suite “The Three Elizabeths” written in the early 1940s by Eric Coates.

Wonderful dramatisation of this saga of Victorian life.
I have been given volumes 1 and 2 of this saga. Having seen the original episodes when first shown on television, I was prepared to be disappointed (memory can view things through rose-coloured spectacles). Not so! I have been enthralled by these episodes, not being able to wait to see the next one on the video. The acting is superb - Kenneth More, Nyree Dawn Porter, Eric Portman, to mention a few. The fact that the series is in black and white does not detract from it at all. I can't wait to purchase the next volumes, which I will do as soon as I can afford them. I thoroughly recommend this to any one who has an interest in life as it was in the rarefied atmosphere of those days of the affluent middle class, and what goes on behind the facade.