The Onedin Line

Gosh, this is good.

I started watching the repeats as it's a programme that my parents used to watch every week and I remembered the great opening credits with the scenes of the ship out at sea and the famously romantic music.

For all its technical limitations, this show could give any modern TV series a run for its money. Fascinating historical detail, intelligent and well-rounded characters, great performances, and a profoundly gritty realism without being self-consciously so.

The women are also a joy: complex, able and utterly real.

Granted, the studio-bound scenes look really clunky, but this is offset by the myriad location work either in port or out at sea.

Recommended.

Grand music, real drama, tall ships and Jessica Benton, how can you go wrong?

One way is to cram all the episodes together so that each DVD forms some kind of four hour movie version of 'The Onedin Line'. This means that the writing talent that went into giving us some dramatic flow in an hour show is completely crapped on. At odd points during your viewing, provided you've got four hours spare to do that, you'll suddenly get a bit of the Adagio from 'Spartacus' dropped on you like a piece of musical jetsam. And with only your memory to guide you as to where each episode ends, you end up with a very up and down experience and not what TV drama is all about.

I for one would've been keen to see the names of the actors in each episode, too, as I'm sure they would be keen for me to know who they were. Alas, even that is lost to us in some harebrained attempt to turn this magnificent production into something even David Lean could find a trifle lengthy and vicissitudes.

We can only hope the BBC doesn't try this again with the second series.

This series was immensely popular in Britain during the 1970's. Its combination of boardroom antics and exciting seafaring action had Sunday evening audiences hooked. Containing some excellent location work and a memorable musical score, this was costume drama at its best.

Wonderful drama, great actors Peter Gilmore, Anne Stalleybrass, and marvellous soundtrack, it's true they don't make them like this anymore. This is when British tv was great.

A BBC serie. And the another definition becomes bizarre. Because it is the serie of many youths. Defined by costumes, atmosphere, the feeling of salted air, more than reasonable performances. And by a sort of flavour. Enigmatic, powerful, seductive, delicate, bitter. A serie about a man, his love and his ambition. And, sure, about the sea and the spirit of a period. All - impecable. And preserving, after decades, the fresh air of pure adventure.