The Crusades

Too cheesy for my taste. The dramatization of the story consists almost only of closeups of horses and the narrator talking to the camera like Hulk Hogan in the WWE.

I just watched the first episode of this series. I wouldn't watch another. The narration is good, giving a decent description of events. But it really could have been a radio program, because the visuals added almost nothing to the story. We saw the face of the narrator far too much, only because they had nothing else to show us, and other descriptions were illustrated by nearly irrelevant shots of modern cities--hundreds of street scenes of modern cities--landscapes, burning candles, horses' feet (for a cavalry charge, you see), with hardly three or four maps. The only serious illustration of the crusade came from a medieval illuminated manuscript, but we saw only two or three images, shown over and over again. I found myself looking around the room and at the ceiling occasionally, simply because there was nothing on the screen worth watching.

Get a decent book on the crusades if you're interested in the topic, a simple one will do, with lots of good illustrations. You will enjoy it more than this series.

Very interesting how they completely skip over saying the Countries/Places attacked by the Crusaders were originally Christian and taken over by Islam by the sword. The crusades happened as a response of being occupied by Muslims who forcefully took their lands. Christianity spread by word in the beginning, Islam spread by the sword in the beginning leading to the crusades. But they don't mention this. Very misleading. Sure there may be some good history in this show, but leaving out important information to not offend certain people is not history, and is not honest. If you watch this series, keep in mind that they may not be telling the full story.