Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18177 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-02-21
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 408 minutes

Synopsis
Television drama covering Winston Churchill's political career in the period from 1929 to 1939.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating but Flawed
This series held my interest from beginning to end. How could it miss with such a monumental protagonist and such absorbing subject matter. I especially liked Nigel Havers as Randolph, and the actors who played Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay McDonald, and Clement Atlee. I am afraid that I am less enthusiastic about Sian Phillips, who always plays Sian Phillips, and who, in my estimation, managed to make Clemmie rather unpleasant (almost as unpleasant as Phillips, appropriately, made Livia Augusta in "I Claudius."). As for Robert Hardy, he does an on-target impression of Sir Winston Churchill, but I think that he was misdirected.

Did Sir Winston really orate twenty-four-seven? Surely he spoke in a more modulated voice with the family around the dining room table [when he wasn't shouting at Randolph] or in the privacy of his bedroom! In this production, he addresses his "dear Clemmie" in his "fight-them-on-the-beaches" persona, to such an extent that Hardy's portrayal sometimes slips into parody. But again, I believe that the fault must be laid at the door of the director.

This quibble aside, the production is excellent. The recreation of the scenes in the House of Commons is fascinating. When Churchill is at the dispatch boxes letting the coalition government have it, Hardy is magnificent. This series is highly recommended for anyone interested in British political history.

"The price of greatness is responsibility."
The movie covers the ten lonely, frustrating years of Churchill's political comeback. Sacked for his Gallipoli blunder, failed as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was long considered an embarrassing failure. Pigheaded, politically incorrect at the time, histrionic, he still had the guts to cry wolf against the rising Nazi menace and call for rearmament, only to be ignored by hesitant MPs and tremulous PMs. On top of it he suffered bouts of jealousy and depression, family and financial problems. Yet, all through his ordeals he still managed to paint, write, lecture, garden, ride, hunt, drink bucket loads of booze, and deliver the finest speeches of the Century!

Incredibly bad quality
First time I ever returned a DVD to Amazon. The sound quality of this DVD is pretty bad, but the picture quality is so awful there were times I thought I was looking at an impressionist pointelist painting. Simply unwatchable.