Aristocrats

Sarah describes her sisters.

Caroline is clever, Emily is like a mother to me, Louisa is an angel and Cecilia is a child. I am a disappointment.

This is based on a true story and is actually very good viewing. It has six parts, showing the sisters as children and finally as old ladies.

Apart from Cecilia, all the sisters stories are based around their loves and family.

Emily is the narrator of the story as it proceeds.

The costumes and wigs are wonderful and the music is good too. All the sisters give great performances.

American here who loves all things BBC and ITV, mostly period dramas. This was fair but there were so many brothers and sisters then husbands and wives and then MORE children, eventually I was so confused about who everyone belonged to. As they aged it was worse. I won't spoil anything but there is one original sister who is so darn miserable and I assume it was the intention that her character have ZERO personality. The character became hard to watch. It IS good but I urge you to pay close attention to the original siblings, there's about 10 and they average about 8 children each with all the drama that goes with them and you'll be lost.

I found this on freevee. I give these things about 30 minutes and, if I am not captured, I move on. This captured me pretty quickly. Basically it is the life and loves of 4 (well maybe 5) sisters. The first 4 episodes work very well with basically just about every sister meeting their husband and getting married. Each "love story" is interesting and enjoyable.

For me the problem starts around episode 4 as we focus on Lady Mary. We have two problems. The actress (Jodi May) just doesn't work here. She is lacking any charisma. She also doesn't fit into her costumes properly. It is really noticeable. Her plot line is also terrible. Makes the character come off as an absolute idiot that I am supposed to feel bad for. Then a main character passes away and there is absolutely no effects to anyone else? Seems like perhaps something got cut?

From here the show starts going off the rails with big mistakes and things that just make the viewer go, huh?

Overall though.. still good enough to watch.

Based on a true story, Aristocrats follows an English aristocratic family, who claims royal blood and status via Charles II bastard lineage. The convoluted time-line in fits and starts, takes place prior to the American Revolution on through to the Irish uprising in 1798.

The story starts out interestingly enough, but at about part 3 of 6 you begin to wonder if there is a point to the story. The last 3 parts are simply depressing. More than anything, the time-line begins to rapidly fly by without any specific storyline accountability nor historical grounding. The casting is odd in general. In particular, as the characters age, the casting changes are really horrible choices that offer no consistency or context of character and plot.

If you've nothing else, you may find this a mild diversion. But all in all, this doesn't measure up to the BBC's standards.

I had a problem with this production -- it didn't know what it wanted to be. Was it a faithful account of a true story or was it a Goergian soap opera with harlequin romance cover bedroom scenes? The worst problem was the inconsistency - the period drama with the social commentary was dropped by the end of the series, which had turned into a story of political intrigue, involving characters we knew little about.

I enjoyed the series but did not love it. The first two episodes that I thought were going to set the tone for the balance of the series, turned out to have little to do with the rest of the storyline. After the first two episodes, the series became less focused with too many characters and little impact on the storyline.

I am sure the book is much better and on a positive, this series does encourage me to go out and read more about these sisters and what really happened. This film was a great introduction to the story but it was far from satisfying.