Rating: 
Summary: Needs to be reissued
Review: This is a an absolutely great dvd as far as the performances go. Unfortunately, the video quality is quite poor. The picture is often faded (the VHS copy has more color) and the sound quality is also pretty bad. It would be really great if BBC decided to reissue this set with better attention to video and audio quality as they did in Elizabeth R. I know that I would re-purchase the set if they reissued it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Series
Review: This is a wonderful series of the wives of Henry VIII. Having an affection for the Tudor period, I found these DVD's to be well worth the money. The sound quality seems okay to me though I had read that it was very bad. It did not detract from the movie at all. One other point which I had read about was that on the DVD, you could not skip to chapters. You could only skip to the beginning of each wife's story. While this is true, you can fast forward through each one. Since this is what you would have to do with the VHS tapes, I didn't find it to be that much of a bother. I recommend this set to anyone who finds this era in history to be fasinating.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting
Review: If you know the history then you will enjoy this interpretation. If not you can take this as your history and learn of the reasoning and lack of behind this great time in history. Riveting is to say the least as you expect this to be a documentary. Upon viewing you find that it is anything but. As with all BBC productions there is no equivalent. A few liberties were taken with history but you just do not care because you are too busy kibitzing. The Six Wives of Henry VIII can not be told in less than six programs. Each program or play has an appropriate tittle that explains the next queen. If the quality of the writing varies that is because they have different writers and it shows. When I first say that the episode "Catherine of Aragon" was written by Rosemary Ann Sission I knew we had a winner as she was also the screen writer for "Strong Poison" in the Lord Peter Wimsey (1987) (TV) series. So you can image how amazed I was to find that the episode "Anne Boleyn" was written even stronger. The unifying element is Keith Michell who plays a spoiled brat oops I mean Henry VIII. He starts out clean shaven in his pageboy hairstyle and ends up as scruffy as his personality by the last play. It helps to have some background information of the time and place. Yet they fill it in well as they describe the current events and how they were influences by Henry VIII and his Six Wives.
Rating: 
Summary: unbelievable bad
Review: i was looking forward to my tapes being delivered and sitting down to watch them and enjoy them. boy, was i wrong. with every tape i watched, i thought it would get better.once again i was wrong. the setting, the actors, everything about it was just... horrible. that is all i can say about it. you live and learn.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful plays and performances - bad picture quality
Review: Keith Mitchell turned in the performance of a lifetime playing Henry VIII from his teens to old age. His performances in these 6 plays won him an Emmy Award for Best Dramatic Actor in a series (they didn't have a separate category for miniseries back then). These shows are entertaining and present an accurate feel for life in Tudor period England. While this is an ensemble piece, there are only a few outdoor scenes, relatively few players, and very plain sets. It is a pity that more care wasn't taken in preserving the original master tapes from both a video and audio perspective. Many scenes are washed out, blurred, and distorted. If there was ever a project worthy of digital restoration (or improvement) this would have been it. Still worth the price. Whether you are a history buff, a fan of theater or just a fan of English television, this is a set worth owning. Over thirty years later, this is still one of the finest miniseries ever broadcast.
Rating: 
Summary: Two Thirds
Review: This is a wonderful play, but unfortunately Disc 1 and Disc 2 had the same content though they were labeled differently. What a disappointment. I saw the series originally while living in England, as an expatriate, and would have loved to see the whole series again. I'm especially sorry to have missed the beginning. Ann Boleyn's story is fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: ANNE B AND ANNA VON CLEVES! :D
Review: Folks, I love this series. I rented it yesterday...and I want my mom to get it for my 15th birthday! I love Anne Boleyn more than any other historical figure in the world, and Iam watching Jane Seymour's tape right now. Do u guys remember the scene where Anne comes and rips off Jane's locket? That was hot.
But I love Anne von Cleves' tape the best! She is so funny....especially the parts where she is dancing with Holbien tlaking about, "I vant to learn how dey dress and dance etc" and the other part where she tries to sing and play the lute, when Henry comes in ready to get carnal with her. Anna, not very fond of this tries to distract him by saying, "I feel so tired from today." And then Henry says, "Aye. And the most tiresome bit is yet to come......"
One complaint...why is Katty Aragon so pale? She looks like she's from El salvador rather than spain. But I love her accent.
I still have to watch Kat Parr's, but Kat howard's it so good. She gets in bed with Thomas and tells her ladies giggling how she slept naked with Francis and whatnot.
...
Peace ya'll! Anne Boleyn and Kat howard rock! ...
Rating:
Summary: MUST HAVE!
Review: Henry VIII, a slime? Or just misunderstood? *snort* If you know anything about this king, you probably already have an opinion, but seeing these six wonderful plays, it will no doubt reinforce that opinion! Keith Mitchell has Henry down to a tee! Moody, spoiled, indulgent, and RUTHLESS! If you were a woman back then, even the Queen, you were expendable! The first two plays "Catherine of Aragon" and "Anne Boleyn" are heartbreaking! Both women were used and disposed of very cruelly, and while Anne was certainly no saint, she was beheaded due to totally false charges. All of the plays are marvelous and so accurate, it's like reading a history text, only much more exciting! "Jane Seymour" is also wonderfully done. Jane obeyed and pretty much did what she was told, but it is obvious in the play, and also in history, that she may have been the woman that Henry truly did love. That is, if he was capable of the emotion. Still, Mr. Mitchell has some very hilarious moments throughout these six tapes, huffing and blustering around and throwing tantrums. A wonderful addition to your collection! You'll watch them again and again!
Rating:
Summary: Michell and cast are simply stupendous!
Review: This English production hails as one of the best of the miniseries genre. Shown on CBS over a quarter century ago, the production sports award-winning acting, scrumptious detail to clothing and setting, and a script that delivers the right blend of political intrigue, historical accuracy, and sex. What else do you want in a drama???
Rating:
Summary: Divorced, Beheaded, Died...You Know the Rest
Review: " The Six Wives of Herny VIII" is a compelling historical drama in which Keith Mitchell, in the title role, recreates the King's life from his athletic youth to his agonizing death, all the while carrying the viewer on an exciting journey of the political and religious intrigues of the day.
Accompanying us on this journey are six actresses and sundry supporting cast members who are all worth their mettle. Annette Crosbie plays Henry's first wife, Catalina D' Aragon, the youngest daughter of Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who becomes a competent regent in her husband's abscence and a devoted wife and mother despite Henry's infidelities. After 20 years of marriage, she is cruelly betrayed by an obscure verse in the Book of Leviticus because of her previous, but allegedly unconsumated marriage to her husband's late brother, Arthur. Her decline in status is tragically reenacted, redeemed by the way she is eulogized by and official at her death.
Dorothy Tutin's Anne Boleyn is a boisterous gossip when she first appears on the scene. Her rise in status begins during the first episode, largely because of her role as Catherine of Aragon's most prominent Lady-in-Waiting. Despite her arrogance, and Henry's desire for her, she fails to give Henry a living son, as did Henry's first wife. Her tale moves in a glittering gallop, and she gives Henry the child who will become the greatest of his successors, Elizabeth. But her tale ends with her discreditation, largely with the help of the unscrupulous, Thomas Cromwell, her arrest at a tournament, her imprisonment, trial, during which she displays extreme gallantry despite the false accusations of adultery and incest leveled against her and her brother, George, and finally, with her execution. My heart went out to Mark Smeaton in this production because as I watched this innocent court musician lay his head on the block, what made an impression was the way his eyes were bruised and blackened by the torture imposed on him by Cromwell.
Anne's replacement is Jane Seymour, whose gentleness and piety are marvelously emphasized by Anne Stallybrass. This Lady-in-Waiting to Henry's first two Queens begins to feel guilt about replacing a woman she believed to have been wrongfully executed as the King's wife. When her episode begins, we see the dying Queen attending her infant son's baptizim, and the principals of the court over which she presided in attendance, including Alison Frazer's sweetly portrayed Mary, the prodigal daughter to whom Jane restores to her husband's good graces after years of exile in the wake of the King's divorce from her mother, Catherine.
While the career of Thomas Cromwell,(played by an appropriately conniving Wolfe Morris, whose resmblance to the real Cromwell is remarkable) may have advanced because of one Anne (Boleyn), another Queen Anne would prove to be his downfall. Seeking to ease his heartbreak over the loss of a wife he truly loved, as well as to strengthen political ties with a Protestant nation, Henry agrees to marry Anna Von Cleves, played by an enchanting and ebullient, Elvi Hale. But he soon realizes that Holbein's portrait of her was more flattering than factual, and the unsophisticated young bride is soon put aside.-The second Foreign-born Princess to be divorced by Henry VIII. In his anger, Henry turns on the very man who helped increase his power over the years, and the end of Henry's fourth marriage finds the unscrupulous lawyer, Cromwell imprisoned and sending the King letters in which he pleads for mercy, something that Anne Boleyn, over whose execution he presided, didn't do even though she had been married to him.
Angela Pleasance is the naive young girl who was Anne Boleyn's cousin and Henry VIII' s fith wife. For a modern viewer, her life invites comparisons to the life of Princess Diana.--A promiscuous blue-eyed blonde(although Catherine was promiscuous before her marriage, and Diana wasn't)railroaded into an unhappy Royal marriage at an early age, who finds comfort in the arms of other men, which eventually cost her her life, and when she went down, she took two guys out with her. In Catherine's case, the two guys were Thomas Culpepper and Francis Dereham. Like her cousin before her, Catherine Howard was executed for adultery, but unlike Anne, the charges against her were not trumped up. Lady Mary Rochester, who had covered for her during her extramarital flings, is condemned with her.
Last but not least, is the "survivor", Catherine Parr, who was twice wed and twice widowed before marrying the King. While she is a very fine actress, Rosilie Crutchley bears little resemblance to the real Catherine Parr, a redhead like himself, and like his first wife. Her own desire to marry Jane Seymour's brother, the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour must be put on hold because of the King's desire to marry her. She tends to the ailing King in his last years, and befriends each of his three children, but barely saves herself from a charge of heresy. After Henry's death, she vows to marry Thomas Seymour, but, like his sister, Jane, her own life would terminate in childbirth.
And so, this odyssey involving three Catherines, two Annes, and one Jane comes to an end. While it occassionally goes out of sequence, it is a meticulously created series, with solemly portrayed events in British history.
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