Michael Wood's Story of England

These series tell English history via life of a single village called Kibworth in Leicestershire. This is right in the middle of British nowhere, but you will be surprised by interesting historical connections this place has. Woods engages villagers in archaeological digs in their backyards and then has professional archaeologists to analyze samples of ceramics to date and describe the finds. It's amazing how much small pottery shards can tell you. He also goes to archives and traces lives of various village families, this bit was somewhat more boring. Overall it resembles Michael's other series, where he tries to trace history via life of ordinary people. However in his Alexander or Trojan war series the history itself is much more dynamic and interesting and the places are much more colorful. Michael is as engaging and fun to watch as in his other series but the material is arguably less entertaining here.

Another unfortunate bit is that many major and interesting events of English history are not even mentioned here (ex. hundred years war, many events of Elizabeth I reign, era of great geographical discoveries etc.) since they left no mark on Kibworth. So these series convey the spirit of English countryside and people very well but they are not good if you want to time-travel through major events of English history.

This is a fascinating and superb series that very colorfully and entertainingly covers the entire history of England, from pre-Roman times to the 1950s, via the villages of Kibworth in the county of Leicestershire. Through various means -- archaeological, documents, topographical studies, and local and oral history -- we find out the true story of real and ordinary people. History comes vividly alive in a way that the endless successive repetition of wars, monarchs, and squabbling aristocrats never can.

We are never patronized or asked to indulge in glorious fantasies here. History is told via the words of the people themselves -- through, for instance the amazingly in-depth documents and scholarship that have been preserved throughout the centuries in this uniquely placed village. As it turns out, there's a lot more here than even remotely meets the eye. We get a much fuller and more comprehensive and understandable history of this England than I ever would have thought possible.

The great thing about this series is that it was aimed for a British audience but it's so clearly understandable and tangible that Americans and any other nationality can easily understand it as well.

The series is gloriously and beautifully filmed and scored, and Michael Wood is an unfailingly charming, engaging, charismatic, and knowledgeable presenter.

I promise you will learn much more than you ever thought you didn't know about English history. If, for instance, you are a fan of the films of Ken Burns, or Michael Wood's other programs (e.g., The Story of India), or Simon Schama, you are sure to love this series.

Unfortunately when the series aired on PBS it was severely butchered to the point of incomprehensibility and was missing missing 40% of the footage (two hours and two episodes), and the timeframes were all mixed up and confused. (The same goes for the streaming video version viewable on pbs.org.)

But fortunately both the Region 1 (available on Amazon.com) and Region 2 (available on Amazon UK) DVD sets contain the FULL original UK version, as it aired on the BBC. The DVD sets are the full thing, and it's definitely worth the purchase price to be able to see the entire unbutchered series, complete with all of the extremely relevant information that was cut when it was televised on PBS.

(The only thing disappointing about this series is the subtitles -- or rather lack thereof. I do NOT at all recommend it for the deaf or hearing impaired, because the subtitles are so ridiculously incorrect and botched up as to be worse than useless. That's the same case with the Region 2 version and the online version, so there's no help there either.)

I agree with both reveiwes made so far so I will not add to what has already been said . I have just finished watching it in 6 hour long episodes and found it heart warming, full of inforemation and entertaining. I am envious because I would loved to have lived in a place like Kibworth.