After the success of The Three Musketeers, the series was revived and made mammoth! The stories still revolve around the life and times of the musketeers but we now have moved on 20 years. As Dumas had also written a book entitled said Musketeers…20 years on, we must of expected something. These 20 years have seen much change and also many things mature. Sexual tensions, political and religious manipulations and of course the usual violence of the Musketeers…

What is one persons gold is another’s foolish stuff…so to speak. I loved the Musketeers ability to engage and entertain. I didn’t like however that the series feels dated. In many respects it had been surpassed by the 70s- 80s excellent action films and compared to the latest incarnation now, it looks slow and uncomfortable in places. Even as a series that was filmed mostly live, its immediacy will wrong foot many as it is paced with the balance on textual reflection.

This said, in my very humble opinion it is extremely well acted, great attention to space and costume is used and the scripting is often amazingly clever. The time when television was this brave and powerful is still here but it does the trick of making a series based on a book about the text as well as the screen. Now it is about the audience and their posteriors. To the Disc and it is an empty shell and one that annoyed me no end. I would implore people to ask why the great actors like Brian Blessed were not asked an opinion or even asked to speak about an episode or two. No care was taken in making the series grow and so the viewer is left with the televisuality and nothing else.