George III: The Genius of the Mad King

I live in the USA and most Americans know nothing about King George III of Britain. Some might recognize him as the king during our revolution...and a rare few might know he suffered from mental illness. But that really is about it for most of us. Fortunately, "George III: The Genius of the Mad King" helps us to look into the mind of the man, as the royal family consented to have all of Geroge's correspondance copied so that anyone, not just academics, could read it. It consisted, amazingly, of 320,000 pages!

I noticed one reviewer complained that the documentary didn't go into more depth about his illness. They also complained that the film didn't talk about porphyria...though no one is absolutely certain he had this rare disorder. For more on that sort of thing, you'll just have to watch a different film...and no film can cover EVERYTHING about George.

What the film DOES consist of is looking at the obsessive-compulsive sort of letter writing the king did as well as his notes. These letters and notes show a man who is NOT an incompetent nor ill during much of his reign. Instead, he seemed to have a strong understanding of so much....politics, the sciences and more. It presents a fascinating portrait of a complex guy...not 'that evil king during the revolution'. Overall an extremely fascinating film one that I really enjoyed and recommend strangly to history lovers.

I was hoping the documentary would go into his medical illness, Acute intermittent porphyria, that caused him to have mental problems. He didn't really have a "mental illness." He actually had a medical illness that manifested in psychosis, Acute Intermittent Porphyria. Please do a documentary about this.

This video has been poorly done either the microphone is too far away where you have to up the volume at some points of the film. This documentary needs to be redone.

Fascinating subject. Dictorial failure. You can not hear the words spoken by the narrator! Frustrating project should be re-done. So sad a huge failure

I found this documentary very helpful in better understanding George III & this reign