Bolívar

I know little of Simon Bolivar and less about South America and shame on me for my ignorance. No doubt this series will send me to the history books. In the meantime, Bolivar is an entertaining look at the period. We have all the necessary tropes--treacherous relatives, corrupt officials, wavering revolutionaries, and the honest slaves--plus a beautiful background that serves as setting. The actors are good and we don't have the terrible mugging for the camera we see in telenovelas. The series is certainly entertaining and perhaps it might make you curious to learn.

This is an incredible series of historical fiction, (mostly historical fact), on Simon Bolivar. He is one of my all time heroes as I did a paper on him in college for political sciences. He had charisma, looks, and a magnetic personality. For that, the capitalist forces of old time monarchy in Europe wanted him gone from their guilded lives forever. You can see this, if you don't mind the English subtitles, on Netflix my friends. This is a really great show, full of action, adventure and sex. Enjoy and tell me your thoughts on good ole Simon and his wild and Wiley antics and hudspah. Cheers, Murf

I am a great admirer of Simon Bolivar, a true hero who sacrificed everything for an ideal. This series is fantastic in spite of Maduro's comments, one can only admire Bolivar all over again. The wars of independence were atrocious and only a heroic figure like Bolivar - with the education, connection and wealth and resolve to back him-- could have undertaken it. We can only applaud Netflix and Caracol for such an amazing undertaking. The costumes are beautiful, the scenery of Colombia breathtaking, the acting superb and it will help to remind all Americans (North and South ) who Simon Bolivar was. Some reviewers are pedantic. True, Abreu's accent sounds Colombian, but who is to know what Venezuelan accent was two hundred years ago. True, that some battle scenes are not epic, but all 60 episodes are worth watching not once but twice.

To my understanding, the series appears to have taken a few creative liberties with the actual story, (it was a telenovela after all) but it ultimately remained true to the actual history of Latin America's great liberator Simon Bolivar. I am a student of Latin American History and I certainly studied extensively about Bolivar in college, but I must admit that I never studied much about Simon Bolivar's life as a child or young man, and to my mind, this is where the series really shines in particular. Both of the actors who played Simon Bolivar in his younger years brought a lot of passion and excitement to the character and each helped the viewers relate to Bolivar and understand how he became the man he became. No offense to actor Luis Geronimo Abreu who played Bolivar as an older adult, but I think the director should have stuck with actor Jose Ramon Barreto who played Bolivar as a young man instead of switching actors; since the viewers had already bonded with him as the adult Bolivar during episodes 5-25. In any event, both Maximiliano Gomez Silva, who played Bolivar as a 12-13 year old and Jose Ramon Barreto did a remarkably good job in their portrayals of Bolivar, and there were many other great performances by the supporting cast members; such as Erick Rodriguez, who played Simon Bolivar's mentally disturbed cousin Pablo. I would recommend this series to anyone with a love for history or just as a good bit of drama.

Absolutely loved this show. I cried a lot throughout the series because it made me transport myself as if I lived during that time. Beautiful production and amazing actors. Recommend it to others to watch.