Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This set of movies is a wonderful adaptation of the Horatio Hornblower series. I bought the original set of four, and then the other two, and I watch them all the time. The movies very accurately portray the character of Horatio Hornblower, and are very nearly true to the storyline in the books. I would recommend these movies to anyone who has read the Hornblower books, or anyone who loves naval stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely worth it -- not just a Guy Thing
Review: Usually women steer clear of "war story" type stuff, but in this case, don't! It's much more than cannons and battles. This series is filled with fantastic character work and excellent relationships between the main cast. (Cherie Lunghi is a standout in "The Duchess and the Devil" as a canny, trustworthy-or-not Duchess, and the rest of the cast is absolutely worth the price of admission.) You see the main character grow plausibly from a promising upstart to a seasoned leader climbing the career ladder, and forging strong friendships and gaining the devotion of his men along the way. It's a real ensemble cast, with all of the supporting characters given real, textured personalities. Definitely a great set of DVDs for a girls' night in!The only reason it's getting only four stars is that the "making of" information is paper-thin and more of an advertisement for the series itself than a real exposition on the creation and execution of the series itself. I don't need what amounts to a commercial for the show and can't see the logic of having it on the DVD set; obviously, if I bought the DVDs, I didn't have to be sold on it. I would much rather have had real technical information on the adaptation of the novels, the filming, and the post-production.
Rating:
Summary: This is what MOVIES should aspire to never mind a TV series
Review: What a great buy .... more than 10 hours of fabulous entertainment, a truly well acted, written, scripted and filmed mini series that you would be hard pressed not to just sit there and veg out for all six discs at once.
The fact that the used sets, even for a DVD set release in 2002 are selling used in Amazon at practically the same price as a new set certainly attests to the demand of this quality DVD set! WOW ... I do not know how big the release on this set was but once this set sells out it will most certainly become a classic and pretty pricey. No wonder this movie was an Emmy winner ....
The producers certainly spared little money on the sets, locations, script writers and trying to maintain historical accuracy. Unlike the movie 'Master & Commander .... give me a break please ....' the stories of Hornblower, written by CS Forester are historically correct and do NOT have French and British naval ships fighting in the Pacific Ocean for some dumb reason or another.... The sea battles are outstanding, the British naval officers are depicted in a very true to life manner as being the unquestioned supreme being on their ships. If I had only one comment though I was kind of surprised to see Horatio being taken out of ' the hole' in a Spanish prison, after some days in the hot hot sun, wearing a crisp clean shirt, almost shaved .... hey he didn't even have a bathroom in that pit ... what gives ... LOL
A couple of other things that really bother me for the critical 'DVD purists' in our midst. One, it only has an English soundtrack and only the first four DVD's have English subtitles. Dumb ones too cause I think they were made for the hearig impared rather than for subtitles since we get A LOT of 'bell tolls ... bird squaks .... men groan ..' The last two disks of the series don't even have that, and even though I do think I speak English the subtitles do help, in many scenes, to understand the English accents of the sailors. And whats with the last two DVD's not having ANY subtitles no matter how aggravating?
The second thing that bugged me is that this movie was only cut in Dolby 2.0 digital ... what in the world were the producers thinking with that one? This is a fabulous movie for soundtrack battles and a Dolby 2.0 .... shame on you! Seems to me that unionized sound/sound track editors and subtitle people people in the UK were too expensive .. a major shortcoming but not enough to knock a solid 5 star rating ...
Appart from those two foibles this is a technically exceptional DVD set .... you can't go wrong .....
Rating:
Summary: Swashbuckling Fun
Review: When I first started watching the Horatio Hornblower episodes as shown on A&E, I didn't realize at the time that they were based on an actual person's life story. This collection looks as though it has more extras on it than the ones previously released on DVD. Excellent acting - Ioan Griffudd is a delight, and the supporting cast is exquisite!
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