Aristocrats

Super series for anyone interested in the history of the period of enlightenment. Read the book for a better insight.

The Second Duke of Richmond is played by Julian Fellows. The format and the music seem so redolent of Downton Abbey. Anyone else see it as a forerunner of Fellow"s Downton?

I'm surprised Fellows didn't tack a raft of mini series onto The Aristocrats. The Lennox offspring, legitimate and otherwise, weave through much of British and overseas history, which now, sadly, has abruptly ended with Brexit and the demise of an entire nation.

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.

This was fabulous. It gets 9 out of 10. What keeps it out of the 10 category is the fact that two big questions are raised in part 2 that part 3 (the conclusion) fails to answer.

First of all, what happens to the fifth sister, Cecilia? She first appears in part one as the late-in-life child of the second Duke of Richmond and his duchess. Still a baby when they die, she is sent to Ireland with Louisa and Sarah to be reared by Emily and her husband.

In part 2, the reappears as a teenager. When the family learns that Sarah, now married and back in England, is pregnant, she wants to go and help with the new baby. Emily is afraid that she is too weak to travel, having just recovered from an unspecified illness, but she lets her go anyway.

The next time we see her she looks very ill indeed, but nobody pays any attention. Emily has come to England to argue with Caroline about who should be blamed for Sarah's bad situation, with Louisa along to mediate. As they quarrel, Cecilia leaves the room, and we see what they miss: she's coughing up blood. When come into the hall, still shouting, they fail to notice that she has collapsed in a corridor.

So what happened??? That's the last we see or hear of Cecilia? Did she die? If so, didn't the sisters get back together at least for the funeral?

Maybe I need to read the book.

The other question is: since Sarah, at least as played by Jodhi May, seems to have lacked something in the personality department, how did she manage to inflame the passions of so many men?

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.

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.