Reviews

Ellen stated she wants to show us how designers go about designing furniture. I don't really think much screen time is spent showing how they normally design things. That got lost in the short deadlines and drama. They don't have a three day deadline normally, they do normally have material and labor cost concerns which this competition does not address except for the 1 episode of reused materials. The use of artificially short deadlines to create suspense is a common reality show formula that is used to build suspense and save on production time and costs, but it is very tired. It irritates as much as builds suspense. Surely there is a more creative way to build suspense or at least interest. This Old House never really used time deadlines to build suspense and it lasted for decades.

This is History from only a Jewish perspective. This series applauds illegal internal operations by the Moussad and the government of Israel that include forged passports, kidnapping, and murder of former Nazis and Nazi collaborators while it makes a blanket indictment of the Catholic church and all Catholics.

People like Mengele are "diabolical" enough without having a biased, exaggerated script about them in something posing as a documentary.

Just three of many obvious examples: After having heard of the kidnapping and murder of Adolph Eichmann, it is a ridiculous statement to make in this series that Mengele was "paranoid" while in Brazil after having fled Argentina in fear. 17:18

Definition of paranoid: of, relating to, or suffering from a mental illness that causes you to falsely believe that people are trying to harm you.

This series uses bland euphemisms to describe what had to have been torture of Eichmann by the Moussad to get the address of Mengele.

Wiki says "Mengele was a notorious member of the team of doctors". This series makes you believe Mengele was solely responsible for the selection. If he was the one doing all the experiments on the twins he could not also be there at the trains when millions of Jews, gays, Gypsies, etc. were unloaded to select the fate of everyone. His deeds are bad enough that I wonder why the makes of this series feel the need to exaggerate it.

The series says Mengele was narcissistic and that's why he did not get a tattoo that shows his blood type on his arm like all the other SS officers. Maybe he was just smart. They give no other proof as to why they believe he was narcissistic.

We don't need yet another "documentary" that oversimplifies WWII history. We will never learn what makes people do these things if we always reduce them to caricatures.

I would not have fallen for Hitler's BS as he was coming to power. Why should I fall for all this BS now?

The "experts" in the series are full of people whose statements should be suspect: former Moussad agents, civilian Jewish Nazi hunters, authors like Guy Walters of unscholarly books about the Nazis wanting their 15 minutes of fame to promote book sales, people who were young children at the time who say they did not know what was happening because they did not speak German but who did not understand German but later claim they know complex statements things Mengele made verbatim because they knew enough German to understand that, and Gerald Posner, a former lawyer whose "his two major career disappointments" are that he could not get two of his books made into movies. They were not his books about the children of Nazis. He takes a very anti Arab stance after 911 wanting the blame the Saudi royal family for it.

I tis customary industry practice for the producer to list all the cast. IN a documentary type production that would include any "experts" whose statements they include as well as any witnesses whose testimony they include. The only cast this IMDb lists for the Menegele episode is the narrator. Narrators just read a script verbatim into a microphone. If they had a list of the cast it would be too obvious that this sensationalistic explanation of historical events is related through a biased pool of witnesses and experts.

"We thought Hollywood was doing documentaries instead of films"

It's strange that they could not catch these most wanted of all Nazis for decades, if ever, and yet they claim to not only know every detail about everything that happened to them while they did not know where they were, they claim to have known what they felt. Words like bitter, depressed, etc. from 3rd party people who could not have known are descriptions of how Mengele felt. It is never explained how these people who were not witnesses to these things got the information.

I the Eichman episode they never mention that Mengele thought of him as unimportant in the hierarchy but in the Mengele episode they mention it. Seems to me that would have been important to know mengele's opinion which had less reason for lying about Eichman. If so, it would condemn the Israeli government for kidnapping him and hanging him.

The Paul Touvier episode says "it does seem very fishy that everybody who helped the Nazis happened to be connected to the Catholic church"

I don't see the purpose of making this version. Apparently the BBC has more subsidy money that they can think of what to do with it.

Frankly, the actor playing Pip is not that great and Estella is downright homely and I can't help but see Hercule Perot. Harry Lloyd wonderful as Herbert Pocket as others have said.

Since others have covered many of these shortcomings I shall restrict my further comments to my disappointment in the production design and cinematography.Since the 1946 version won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black- and-White, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White the standard was set. Making the film in color did not alleviate them of a need to meet or exceed that standard.

I know, it won Outstanding Art Direction for a Miniseries or a Movie and Best Cinematography or a Miniseries or a Movie. but all I can say is how can that be? Apparently the judges know nothing about Victorian architecture, furniture or decorative arts and thus are unqualified to judge this film. As for the cinematography, they obviously chose to overlook some fairly frequent major flaws.

Having been an antiques dealer and having a degree in Architecture and being a filmmaker and cinematographer I was hoping at least the production design and camera-work would be worth the effort. The production design is awful with mismatched furniture and decorative arts throughout, usually in the same room.

The overdone areas in a severe state of decay throughout the Haversham mansion was ridiculous. First floor rooms will rarely show signs of decay from a leaking roof in a two story mansion, especially after only a couple decades of neglect. Having the wedding day dining table unchanged makes since but everything else is overkill and unbelievable. The contrast of the dining room with with the rest of the house in previous versions was missed.

There was never any sign that any dust was ever disturbed even on the staircase handrails. Absurd.

It is set in London and surrounds in the early to mid-1800s. The use of candles everywhere was totally wrong. It is the Victorian gaslight era and just before and candles went out of everyday use long before that due to their high cost. They were handmade, and were replaced by whale oil and then kerosene long before gaslight became available in the early 1800's in London. If you can't get that right you are doomed as lighting is the most noticeable thing in the rooms. They should have limited the use of candles to candelabras on the dining tables at formal dinner affairs, just like today.

I hardly saw any furniture that didn't appear to be several decades out of fashion for the period. Not a sign of wealth to have old fashioned used furniture. Reminded me of the set for The Heiress which had a great set except for the furnishings which were also out of date despite belonging to a rich New York surgeon. Few people in London and New York with money at that time did not own out of fashion furniture yet everyone in this film does no matter what their own age. I think the spendthrift Pip would be buying the latest designs to impress Estella and his new friend, not used, out of style furniture.

But for the color, the flocked wallpaper in the Haversham mansion was right out of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", an even worse production design disaster.

Some of the weird camera angles and lenses had no purpose and distorted things and people's faces for no apparent reason. Even though much of the cinematography was nice, this so took me out of the scenes that I can't fathom how it was overlooked when awards were given to the DP. I also was annoyed by his sometimes misdirected rack focusing and blown out exposure on Pip's admittedly pancake makeup white face and other faces at times.

I don't care if he or his brother invented the formula. It's foo formulaic and has become stale.

This could have been custom ordered to specs written by PBS for all we know.

Apparently Burns loves Jazz but hates big band/swing music cause he uses some of the worst choices of it in the film. He also umps back and forth between it and Marsalis' depressing score till you feel quite emotionally manipulated.

Speaking of manipulation, there are way too many viewers that give Burns credit for an emotional story that is simply the facts of the war told as stories by those that lived it. Give me several million dollars to track down those people and I could make a better series.

No stories from gay soldiers. At least the black soldiers had their families and fellow black soldiers to comfort them. Who did the gay soldier have? Apparently they still have nobody judging by the other comments and Buns' failure to acknowledge their existence. I'd like to know how many men, whether gay or just pretending to be gay to get out of serving, did so? Could you even get out of serving if you said you were gay then? Obvious questions he did not ask. Unfortunately it is still PC at PBS to screw gays, but only if they are male. Liberal societies always manage to have a few hypocrisies in there PCness. This is one, redneck is another, and on and on.

The four city structure seems to be an excuse to say why he didn't include things he just chose not to include because he ignored it when convenient to include other people's stories like Daniel Inouye, and rightfully so.

Mentions 16 million American men and women served int he war. He knew he had to give women credit to get on PBS but didn't want to show them in stereotypical jobs like nurse, factory worker so he includes them as if they were 8 million of them risking their lives and dying in combat?

Returns too often back to our segregation of blacks internment of Japanese Americans in camps. Considering the extreme fanaticism of Japanese citizens I don't wonder the fear of some Japanese Americans being fanatics too if understood in the context of the time. It is easy to be an armchair Monday/morning quarterback. Never mentions they did get an apology and reparations that few others slighted or even killed in the war got.

A very Americentric view of the war. You would never know 20 million Russians died in the war but for him spelling it out instead of showing the proof as he did for Americans.

Too quick to adapt the military's habit of treating captured, killed, missing and injured soldiers all as "casualties" as if there is no difference.

According to The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, there were 15 million soldiers killed in WWII and 45 million civilian deaths*. * World-wide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000

They list countries with the most deaths as: Soviet Union 24 million China 20 million Germany 7.7 million Poland 5.6 million Dutch East Indies 3.5 million Japan 2.85 million India 2 million French Indochina 1.25 million Yugoslavia 1 million Rumania .8 million Philippines .75 million Hungary .6 million

Jumps all over the place with quotations of what was happening that are confusing. Far too many "back in Europe" or "back in the Pacific" segways become monotonous.