Titanic

Given the easy potential for creating a compelling, suspenseful drama set aboard the most famous ship in history during its final hours, TITANIC is shamefully poor. It's a wasted opportunity from the get-go, a lazy class-based drama in which – unforgivably – the sinking of the ship comes second to high melodrama and character relationships. I can wholeheartedly pin the blame on the lapel of writer Julian Fellowes, an old-timer with successes in the past (most notably GOSFORD PARK) but whose recent work has been marred by stereotyped characters and a distinct lack of depth. I gave up on series two of DOWNTON ABBEY after one episode, and TITANIC follows that in a downward spiral.

The problems with the writing of this series are endless. The ridiculous decision was made to tell a four-hour miniseries in four separately placed episodes that cover much of the same ground from different perspectives. So we get numerous scenes which are repeated over the four episodes; if a conversation wasn't boring enough the first time around, rest assured they'll show it again another three times! The sinking takes place in the last half hour and almost seems incidental.

The characters are dull and featureless, each occupying a clichéd niche in society: there are the haughty aristocrats, the tradespeople, the servants, the Irish working classes, the stubborn captain, the decent officers, the good-looking Italian waiter. There's a reason why critics dubbed this Drownton Abbey – it's as if the ideas and ethos behind that series were simply transplanted onboard the Titanic with no effort to make them believable whatsoever. Even worse, Fellowes ignores dozens of untold dramas which have been written about but not filmed over the years in favour of his pat, seen-it-all-before character interactions.

It hurts that the characters are so vapid, formless and devoid of features. The aristocrats are invariably repulsive, their servants hard-working and good natured, the Irish shrill and argumentative. If it wasn't silly enough, a murderer is thrown into the mix for no good reason! Decent actors like Maria Doyle Kennedy and Toby Jones are lost amid the sea of faces – if there ever was a series with just too many extraneous characters, then this is it. Half of them are simply forgotten about come the ending (with dozens of loose ends), and none of them feature enough for us to care about them a jot.

Aside from the script, the production has genuinely bad values – it seems all the money was spent on the (wasted) ensemble cast members, and nothing was left for anything else. The Titanic is a cheesy CGI creation that wouldn't be out of place in a bad B-movie, there's no indication at any point that the sea was freezing cold (that's what killed the majority of the people, after all), and disaster scenes are limited to some water sloshing about on the deck – I thought the toilets had backed up for a second, I didn't realise that was supposed to be the ship going down! Add in tons of goofs and you have a production that's almost as much of a disaster as the sinking of the ship itself.

I'll admit, I wasn't overly impressed with the first episode. It seemed like it was something and nothing, but I tuned in next week because I had faith that the storyline would start to make sense. It certainly did. Anyone who felt like the first episode made no sense needs to see it as a game as tetris. Each new episode layers on top of the previous one and fills in all the gaps. Having watched all four episodes, I can say they interlink perfectly. I read that originally, the show would be broadcast over three consecutive nights with episodes 1 & 2 shown back to back. Perhaps if this had been done people wouldn't have been so quick to switch off. I think a lot of people are comparing this to James Cameron's Titanic, but if you want a different take on the actual sinking on the ship, then do watch this. Titanic (97) was centred on a fictional love story, therefore we saw everything from Rose's point of view - it was linear. This program shows several different perspectives and we are able to see the extremely different fates that would have befallen us depending on what our sex/class would have been. It includes some really heart wrenching moments that do not cushion you from what a traumatic experience it must have been. Absolutely worth watching each episode more or less at the same time. Several people have said "We see the ship hit the berg so many times, it detracts from the poignancy of it, what can the fourth episode offer?" It offers a hell of a lot! I gave this 9 out of 10 simply because I wasn't too happy with the first episode.

I'm quite an avid Titanic enthusiast. Not as big a buff as I used to be, but I could probably still teach a couple of things. I wasn't expecting great things of this title (I have issues regarding things made by ITV), but as its the 100th anniversary coming up, I felt I should give this a watch, without trying to get to excited (although admittedly, I was really looking forward to watching it).

So far, I've only seen two episodes, and I have to say, while they aren't perfect, I feel that they are a good watch for a casual enthusiast of Titanic. Let me just touch on a couple of bad points.

Now, I don't know as much as a lot of people about the ship, but it does have some errors in historical accuracy, although reviewing from my perspective as somebody who knows a fair bit, but not a massive amount (or somebody, like me, who used to know, but is too stupid to remember...), I can say that you won't notice anything so bad that will ruin it for you, even though looking at the forums, some people seem to have taken great offence to this.

My main gripe with these episodes is that they are very rushed. A lot of effort has gone into the writing, but really I think there is too much going on and in such a short space of time to fit it in. While it was an interesting, if ambitious attempt at telling the story, I have to admit, I think that it would have worked better by going through in order, rather than chopping and changing the main characters every episode (although I have to say, it's nice they aren't doing a Cameron and just focusing on a couple of people). I'm hoping for the final chapter to be tighter.

Apart from the above, I really enjoyed watching the first two episodes and will be recording the final two as well. I'd really recommend this to someone like myself, it has some interesting characters and plots, and hopefully will be soon setting up to be an entertaining and engaging finale.

I have just finished a rewatch of this tv series.

My experience with it started when it was first broadcast in 2012 and I enjoyed it that much that I got it on dvd.

I then watched it several more times before it got left at the back of my dvd collection and subsequently forgotten about until now.

Dusting it off after all these years. It still holds up.

Yeah as with any Titanic related media one has to take it with a pinch of salt.

While not entirely accurate and at times it does contradict the testimony of survivors.

It is still well made. Great story. Hits all the right notes and leaves you feeling emotionally drained at the end.

It's entertaining enough with a well known bit of history as the backdrop for this tv show.

Good casting too.

Set design is alright. Parts of it are right and some aren't.

Being from the same writer as one would expect it's Downton Abbey on the Titanic.

I'd recommend it highly.

Tale of the Titanic disaster in four parts. The first three tell the same basic story but through the eyes of passengers in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class (steerage). The story lines overlap and all meet in the same disastrous finale: the sinking of the ship.

Although there are no big names in the cast, several are familiar faces (Maria Doyle Kennedy, Linus Roache, Toby Jones, Steven Waddington, Stephen Campbell Moore, Celia Imrie, James Wilby, Linda Kash).

To my knowledge this is the only "Titanic" story that has included the real-life Dorothy Gibson (played by Sophie Winkleman), an American movie actress, who survived the disaster. Back in the US, she was rushed into "Saved from the Titanic" within a month of the sinking. She played herself, recounting the disaster, but was so overcome by grief, she suffered a nervous breakdown during the filming and retired from acting. The 1912 film was an absolute sensation, one of the biggest hits of the time. The film was tragically lost in a 1914 studio fire.