Rating: 
Summary: Not the cadillac of documentaries...
Review: ...but pretty darned good!Really, I do think this is quite entertaining, but a couple things are bothersome about this series. First on the list is the cheesy dramatizations. They talk about thousands of men in a bloody battle; what you see (a lot of!) is about 30 guys shouting and falling in slow motion. Another oddity is the different qualities of the footage. Now it's video, now it's stock footage, now it's film, now it's video. It may be artistic, but it sometimes looks random; there are lots of shots which really don't look like they were done for this production. Finally, in a huge sweeping project like this, of course there's going to be some picking and choosing. But why spend 40 minutes talking about Thomas Beckett when there was so much more going on at the time? Having said all this, it's still worthwhile - I'm just nitpicking. Seems, though, that with such a monumental project they could have gone all the way and done it right.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must for any Anglophile...
Review: A History of Britain is a wonderful but pricey treat for any fan of British history. Some of the negative reviews complain that it is too superficial. How, I would ask, can you give a COMPLETE history of a country that spans 5,000 years? The collection consists of 15 hour-long documentaries starting from Britain's earliest past, five-thousand years ago. We see the still-standing stone communities where the ancient British dwelled. Of course, Simon Schama must be selective in what he chooses to discuss. Each episode has a theme. Although all the major points of British history are touched upon, Schama will focus on the most interesting bits of each event - how and why they happened and what they meant. He tries to give us a sense of reasons behind historical events and not just dates and places. My favorite episode deals with Henry II - arguably England's greatest and most under-appreciated monarch. We see his troubles with Thomas a Beckett. Schama re-creates, in vivid detail, what the "Murder in the Cathedral" was like: Beckett was not a plaster saint, but a street-wise tough kid from the wrong side of the docks who fearlessly faced down his murderers. Visually, the series shows some re-enactments with actors. There are many voice-over readings of historical documents. Schama is the only featured performer. He takes you to the various places and narrates in a very distinctive, clipped manner of speaking. Ultimately, it is the shots of the timeless Britain that are the most effective - the hills, the meadows, and especially the sea. These are the bits that have remained the same and convey the greatest feeling of history. I can't imagine anybody not being fascinated by this program. They are very re-watchable. Having examined them, you will feel a much deeper understanding of British history - and indeed world history. Perhaps no other country has a story as fascinating, as rich, or as varied as Britain's. Watch this and you will know why.
Rating:
Summary: Magna Britania!
Review: A must have for any teacher of AP European History. Perfect for "After-School Theater" sessions. This series is nearly all you'll need to highlight and review most of the events of British history which are crucial in the AP European History curriculum. Undoubtedly, this very modern series was produced with an adult audience in mind, as Schama's (at times) over-dramatic use of metaphor and allusion often flies over the heads of my 14 and 15 year old students. But generally, they have no problem following the basic storylines which Schama has laid out. Most seem to rather enjoy the presentation - especially those who "get" Schama's more subtle side. Overall, the series is informative, entertaining, and told from a very human perspective. For much of the series, Schama is narrating from the very places where the events he is discussing took place - helping to give the viewer feeling of participation. (At a minimum, one at least feels, a bit, as if they've just taken a trip to Britain.) Add to this a good amount of historical reenactment, and you get a very different style from Ken Burns - fascinating and relevant in its own right. Most noteworthy for AP use are the episodes on disc III: "The Body of the Queen" - the story of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots
"The British Wars" - covering the reign of Charles I and the 17th century civil wars.
"Revolutions" - from Oliver Cromwell through the Glorious Revolution. Overall, this series is a very worthwhile purchase - one of the best DVD sets I've seen. Definitely the best, and most complete set on British history. Worth every haypenny!
Rating:
Summary: Good but not great DVD
Review: About the program:
I understand that there is, of course, no archival film footage of medieval England, so the visual aspect of these programs had to be created from nothing, but some of the choices are questionable. Yes, we get a lots of landscape pictures (sped up Koyaanisqatsi-style so we can see all the clouds go zooming by, over and over again), but we also get closeups of hawks flying, wolves fighting, etc--images that just don't fit with the content we hear. About the DVD:
There are neither captions nor subtitles. This is unacceptable, especially for educational material. There are no extras. The box has to list chapter selection and interactive menus to cover up its lack of bonus materials. The only actual extra is some biographical text screens on historical figures. This sounds better than it is. The first disc, containing the first three episodes, sports but one biography--hardly enough when many important figures are featured in the first three installments. I might find this lack of extras forgivable (the series itself is quite well-done afterall, despite my annoyance with the visuals), except that the British version of this title has a whole 'nother disc filled with bonus material. I wish I had gotten that one, and, if you play region 2 DVDs and PAL, you might want to look at amazon.co.uk.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite what I hoped
Review: After reading other reviews of the series with eager anticipation, actually viewing A History of Britain was disappointing. Simon Schama is obviously knowledgeable and put a lot of work into this presentation; I did gain value from watching it. However, I found the tone of the presentation salacious (akin to British gossip rags), tedious at points, unecessarily gory (do we really need to know that a nefarious nobleman reportedly died from a hot poker up his bum?), a bit choppy in the editing and somewhat hard to follow chronologically. More frequent use of maps would have been helpful for those who live outside England and are thus not familiar with British geography. The best produced and most coherent part was the segment on Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitane. This production stirred me emotionally more than I expected, and not necessarily in a good way.
Rating: 
Summary: make that woman stop singing!
Review: Although I am a history buff and I find English history fascinating in general, I have to say that the music used in this series made it really hard to watch. While the yodeling mezzo soprano (or alto?) mangles songs like "The Three Ravens" and "God Save the King" I found it really hard to give the history lesson my attention. As she warbles in and out of key I had to wonder why the director of the series didn't choose silence over this vocalization. Is she some relative?
Rating:
Summary: Worthy effort but not the last word. Leaves much out.
Review: Although I still enjoyed this presentation, I must confess I was somewhat disappointed in it too. Some monarchs are overdone by Mr. Schama while others, such as Richard the Lionhearted, are merely glanced over and brushed aside. Some aren't even mentioned at all such as Richard III or the current House of Windsor and its members, both past and present. Mr. Shama presents the history with an aire of objectivity and the conviction that his presentation is the last word, in fact the only word, that describes the History of Britain when in fact it is merely his own subjective interpretation. No other scholars or historians are quoted or interviewed by Mr. Schama. I guess who needs them when you already have the greatest expert doing the narration.
Rating:
Summary: Worth owning
Review: As a historian, I find that it can become altogether too easy to rest contentedly in one's view of history, however cobbled together over time it may be.
I was pleased to see this well-told series and to consider Simon Schama's point of view. At first I said a few "Nonsenses!" and "Not Quites!" but then I settled down and realized that he was making me think about it all over again, and occasionally shifting my opinion.
It is always a good thing to expose yourself to a cogent discourse, whether you agree with all the opinions or not. His arguments are reasonable when he makes them and well worth hearing.
This presentation has a very powerful sense of touching the flow of events from the past, of how they affect us personally to this day. Simon Schama shifts history out of a 'frozen moment in time' and makes it move.
I do agree with some of the other reviews that mention annoyance at the endless nature-channel footage, particularly in the first few DVDs. I would have been far more interested in more images of petroglyphs, remnants of clothing and tools, more archeological digs, and other directly related material instead of falcons, foxes, and hazy footage of people singing used as a backdrop to Schama's lecture. There were definitely long stretches of what seemed to me to be wasted film.
Yet, I will be purchasing this set, and will watch it again. It helps me remember a flow of events outside my personal historical focus.
Rating:
Summary: British History is American Pre-history
Review: As an American who grew up being taught history in a manner that seemed to think the world began in 1776, or perhaps 1492, this series was a refreshing eye-opener. It was especially interesting to finally get a British perspective on the American Revolution, and to find that the issues being fought over weren't new at all. This series covers a lot of ground, from prehistoric Britain to the 20th Century, in a relatively short time. As such it is a big picture overview of events. Despite this it manages to convey a sense of how events flowed one into another without ever leaving the viewer feeling like something important had been skipped. All in all a fascinating series for anyone interested in Britain, history, or both.
Rating: 
Summary: A distenting opinion
Review: Everyone LOVES this series.... but me. Yes, it's a fine ambition to "bring characters to life" but Schama does so without enough chronological context. His prose is florid in the extreme and as a screen presence I'm sorry to say I found him terribly annoying. His melodramtic delivery is so full of gulping pauses and overwraught phrasing it's maddening. Since the bulk of the series covers a period well before photography we are subjected to animal imagery ad nausim. When Schama tells us Eleanor of Aquitaine spoon fed her feelings to her children, we see a bird regurgitating into the mouths of its young. (And he never mentions she was queen of France before queen of England?) I realize I'm in the minority, but I found this set a great dissapointment. (I do hope Mr. Schama doesn't read this-- but there you are.)
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