1864 - Amour et Trahisons en Temps de Guerre

If you have a flair for European historical stuff, you should like this series. Background is the conflict between the then German Confederation/ Prussia and Denmark around 1860, that eventually led to a war where the already small Denmark lost a good portion of its territory. A part of which however was restituted after WW1 & Versailles after a plebiscite.

An impressive series. Well shot, with excellent representation of costumes and uniforms and the gear of these times. With a lot of themes built in, national pride, political (misled) ambitions, overestimation of the own capabilities, some love, a portrait of the political, aristocrats and peasantry classes, even some supernatural parts. I have seen only few of the actors playing in the series before, in general they deliver a decent acting, not much to criticize IMO. The actor delivering the remarkable character of Monrad is to point out for his impressive performance.

The series was ordered by the danish state I think in occasion of the 150 years anniversary of the events and delivers a fair view of the events. No glorifying nationalistic BS, but a sensible portrait of the era. You might want to read the article about the conflict in wiki first however, to get the hole background of that part of the history.

A solid production, history aficionados won't be disappointed. There has been been the usual criticism about the historical accuracy, but I wouldn't mind. There was portrayed nothing wrong in the wider scheme of the history. It seems that for this kind of "historical" series there are always accuracy pedants jumping out, while they still don't get that it is just a TV-show with aspiration to entertain, where some artistic freedom must be given, and not a documentary.

Series shows very well how some agitators can create too much national feeling and guide people to think "we deserve what others have". Some things reminded me much of 3rd Reich too which happened laters in Germany and what is also sadly happening in Russia today.

Pictures greatly how common people pay the highest price when things escalate to madness like war. Its common today and mostly by US made films to raise war to something "heroic" and "glorious" where individuals just keep going and going like nothing touches them really. which is total bullshit.

There is ongoing try to wipe the past we people have had with wars in this world.

And when reading others comments people are too used to see those war glorifying movies which is supported at least US war industries and government. Guess you need some life experience to see thru all current "propaganda" that is happening.

Overall, nice acting and feeling in movie which you see rarely today unfortunately.

Hope Danes make more series like this. :)

I am 59 and I can be a hard critic but this was one of the greatest dramas I have ever seen.

The production, story, acting are all outstanding. Some people may not like the anti war sentiment. Yet this drama achieves the rare thing of managing to convey powerfully both the reasons why politicians can lead us to war and the horrors that then shatter the lives of those families who fall victims to it.

I have rarely been so moved by a drama. It has tragedy, pain, humour, humanity and above all it gives a us hope - Despite death, life must go on and we owe it to the those who have fallen to live it to the fullest.

If you decide watch this drama till the very end you may be lucky and feel as enriched as I did.

It is fascinating, and maybe instructive, to see how non- Scandinavian/Danish reviewers tend to give this series several stars more those for whom the series was made.

For a non-Dane who had never heard about this... well, let's be honest, footnote in European history, I found it very brilliant. Not for me concerns about historical accuracy or whether this general was actually where he was shown to be. Like I care, to be honest. What I got was a multi-pronged love story, some political intrigue, villains who were as black as they dressed, and - as others have said - battle scenes are quite simply some of the best I have ever seen. Breathtaking, terrifying, stunning.

Yet again Denmark is made to look ravishing by the Danish production team. I mean, wow, is this an amazing looking country or what? My list of "places to visit in Denmark" grew with every episode.

However it was at times confusing and on several occasions I was running for a map - and come to that the Wikipedia pages about the war - just to try to work on what the heck was going on. And it has to be said that the villains really were over the top villains (though maybe the Prime Minister really was this barking?). And at times I mistook Danes for Germans, because both were subtitled identically (and Danish and German sound quite alike). And it was not quite sure that the framing with the modern day pair really worked - it was just too predictable and unoriginal and really no needed. So this was not perfect, but its was still very good.

And it was great to see most of the cast of "Borgen" turn up again, slightly more odd to see at least one of the main locations turn up too - but I guess they only have so many places they can use.

Overall - another hit from Danish TV. How do they do it?

An epic drama about one of the most crucial events shaping modern Denmark (or rather cutting away 1/3 of the nation, Schleswig-Holstein, mainly German speaking). Fantastic sound, picture (remarkable use of different weather conditions) and epic, "beautyfull" (hmmm....can one say that?) very realistic battle scenes, some of the best made in European movies for a long time i believe. Thats the 5 of the 6 stars. Storyline and acting is confusing though. The overplay and "over"-telling the message "war is bad, all generals and politicians are nationalists / more or less cold at heart or even bordering to crazy, and all the soldiers are victims"..... This simply ruins the series. Nationalism and war is much more complex than that and Bornedal fails to tell this story....even though he had a whole candy box of opportunities. He could have chosen a Danish minority family in German Holstein or a German minority family in Danish majority area Schleswig. Or why not the Swedish connection (the "nationalist awakening" of being Scandinavian brothers happened in this century after Sweden, Norway and Denmark had fought each other for over 1000 years), so this brotherhood that now stands for the Scandinavian soul today almost made the Swedish king deploy 15000 troops to Denmark to fight Prussia in this war. Or why not a Polish family living in exile in Denmark. Poland (a Danish Neighbor)disappeared from the map (about 120 years) in 1795 after roughly 1000 years of existence, divided by the big powers of Europe. Denmark was also afraid of simply to disappear, one reason for this war in 1864. These stories could very well describe the complexity of nationalism: identity, fear, hope, pride, community, cultural tradition and identity, language etc. Nationalism is not only Adolf H. and other idiots. Bornedal choice as side stories then: A Roma (Gypsy) family (????) and a healing Harry Potter that can do Hypnosis and see into the future.....WHAT THE F....happened.....Some errors in the historical facts is OK (Colonel Max Müller was not at all at Dybbøl and so on)...and the main characters are fine.....but failing to grab some of the most obvious good side stories and replace them with irrelevant and clairvoyant crap is nothing more but a big time failure from Bornedal....sadly....loosing the obvious opportunity to depict the complexity and horror of war and national identity, instead making it halfway a 70-hippie "all politicians are bad" story. This is a big big shame..... therefore only max. 6 stars (could have been 10 with that fantastic and historically spot-on scenery). We lost the war and now also the series about it.....Lets hope the movie version will cut out the "noice" of this series.......and bring the epic beautiful drama it could be.....