Customer Reviews

The Forsyte Saga, Series 2

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have never read the books or seen the original series. I only was obsessed with the first series on DVD last year and for the last couple of days have been obsessed with the second. The only reason why I went onto the internet as soon as the second one finished is I wanted to see if that was indeed the end. Unfortunately it is.

I am upset that they rushed through the developing love affair between Jolyon and Irene in the first series. I also did not love Series 2 as much as Series I.

But as I had not read the books or seen the 1969 series I did not miss the omissions that obviously disturbed other viewers. It was just a fabulous British drama with wonderful sets and costumes and it totally sucked me in. That is what I really want these days when constantly searching for new dramas to watch on DVD. This one fulfilled this requirement.

I would recommend this version series to anyone!!!!!!!!!!!! I am now just going to have to buy the 1969 series.

I had high hopes for one of the most interesting novels in the Forsyte Chronicle Series: To Let. This novel featured the "star crossed lovers" Jon Forsyte, son of Irene and Young Jolyon and Fleur Forstye, daughter of Soames and Annette Forsyte. I read the novel and was enthralled with the 1969 dramatization which featured the exceptional and perfectly cast Susan Hampshire as Fleur Forsyte. The episodes covering To Let not only featured Ms. Hampshire but Kenneth More, Eric Porter, and Nyree Dawn Porter. It was wonderful.

As I started to watch the new series I thought I was in for a treat. Was I wrong! The writers seemed to throw Galsworthy's wonderful story out the window for a revisionist look at Jon and Fleur's love story. It started by creating a meeting that never took place in the book between Jon and Fleur as children (giving the young people a sense of deja vu when they meet in the art gallery in 1920). Nothing of the sort ever took place. Jolyon and Irene spent much of their time at Robin Hill and Soames and Annette at Mapledurham. The young people never met until the fateful encounter at the art gallery.

The writers took liberties with the plot in many jarring ways. Monty Dartie died before events of To Let took place. Yet there he is (looking like he hasn't aged a day) stirring up trouble for Winifred. The new series has Fleur going incognito to Robin Hill and making the acquaintance of Young Jolyon(who also looks like he never aged a day). Fleur Forsyte was an intelligent young woman who never in a million years would have pulled something so blundering. And Young Jolyon, according to Galsworthy, only met Fleur once, at an awkward tea at Robin Hill; Irene met Fleur and Jon and invited them to tea. Young Jolyon never really had anything against Fleur save she was the daughter of Soames Forsyte. It was Irene that he was most worried about; Jolyon was horrified for Irene to have her son married to the daughter of the man who once hurt her. And there was never a reconciliation between Irene and Soames at the end of To Let. Irene refused to shake hands with Soames at Robin Hill and later, in an art gallery, Soames refused Irene's offer to shake hands with him.

I was disappointed at the way the writers handled Jon and Irene's trip to Spain so Jon could "forget" Fleur. All we have are Irene dancing in a restaurant. It doesn't convey Jon's longing for Fleur and his desperately trying to shorten the vacation so he could get back to her.

Fleur and Jon never had sex during events of To Let. In a later novel, Swan Song, Fleur wishes she had trapped Jon into marriage by sleeping with him and being "compromised," but Jon and Fleur only had a one night stand many years after events of To Let took place.

I was disappointed with the age discrepancies of the characters. June Forsyte was supposed to be in her fifties. Here she looks younger than her half sister Holly (who was supposed to be born about 12 years after June). Prosper Profund was a shadowy, sinister figure; here he's played like a buffoon.
Michael Mont, a pivotal character, is never fully delineated like he was in the 1969 series. Nicholas Pennell who played Michael then did an excellent job of depicting his longing for Fleur and his patience with her.

The acting of the players was good, but they lost credibility playing the characters who didn't seem to belong to Galsworthy at all.

I hope the producers do not plan to do the Modern Comedy series; this was the weakest part of the Galsworthy saga. The best of the three novels in the trilogy was Swan Song, which concerned Fleur's reawakened passion for her cousin Jon (even though both Fleur and Jon are now married to others). The Forsyte Saga novels: The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let, were the best of the series. I would probably cringe at what the producers/writers do to the Modern Comedy series.

This two disc six hour story is a continuation of series one and brings in the children of the two main characters, Soames and Ireene ..... The main characters of the first series do not disappear, and this series two is not a rehash of what happend to the parents but a continuation of the saga.

Why the publishers decided to split this into two series is totally beyond me since I can't imgine buying the second series and asking a million complicated and intricate question of who what when and where ... So don't do it buy both Series one and two and follow the story ...

Enclosed is a review I wrote for the Series one of this fabulous DVD set

Series One: DVD series with 2 espisodes per disc, a full 'nine' hour story was so exciting that my wife and I we had a veritable group show up at the house demanding that we can't finish the series without them being there to witness and enjoy every moment .....

And that's what happened, we not only went through the nine hours of Series one but also the more than 6 hours of Series two making it a FABULOUS weekend of 15 hours of exiting, thoughtfull, thrilling and tender stories of love, hate, revenege and posession .....

Trust me you are talking to a guy that falls asleep in most of today's movie theaters after the first half hour so for me to hang in there for a full 15 hourse makes this and absolute MUST recommendation to purchase for your DVD collection....

Oddy enough, I do however think that women from ages 19 and up will gobble up the love stories of the Forsythe saga while the men however MUST be at least 35 years old or older. I guess it has something to do with a lack of violence and explicit gratuitous sex, so, I suggest that you get a DVD of 'Kill Bill Vol1' and have them watch that in another room over and over ....

OK I'm not going to go into the story or more details in this review since much has already been written about this famous series ... suffice it to say that I certainly identified with the plight of one of the main characters, Soames, the wealthy Forsyth that marries Ireene, a beutifull young woman that does not love him.

Thats the devilishness of the story, he suffers for the love of a woman he can't posess while she suffers for the love of men that get taken away from her......

WOW this is the best EVER in DVD and it will deliciously blow away a weekend with you, your friends and significant others ....

Ah - Series 2 - what can we say except "BOO"? Series 1 had some promise, but there were already changes to the plot that we didn't like - even with wholesale borrowing of entire scene storyboards from the 1967 series - it was beautiful with great costumes and lavish sets but not quite up to snuff.

But with Series 2 - what a true disappointment! The director screwed up the timeline, changed character speeches from one to the other, messing with their motives, and just slopped together some hyper-sexual melodrama lacking the emotional complexity and sophistication of the book and the 1967 series. This is a very unsatisfactory ending - great costumes but truly a troubling tinkering.

Save your sofa time for the earlier 1967 masterpiece - sure - some of the actors' speaking in scenes may seem rushed (like they are trying to get a lot into little time) and the sets chintzy (could make a drinking game of walls wobbling when someone slams a door) but by no means did the director try to instill some mid-late 20th century archetype of rebellious/sullen/spoiled teenagers into a Victorian/Edwardian world where you were either a child or you weren't. And the other reviewers are right - too much sex (just in a time consuming, lame, bodice-ripper novel sort of way - don't watch this for boobies, you'll be disappointed).

The Sequel to the Forsyte Saga was done with perfect casting of the characters, lavish sets and sumptious costuming. It has become one of my favorite series and has inspired me to read the remaining John Galsworthy books in the Saga. Damian Lewis was absolutely perfect in the role of Soames Forsyte.

The entire story beginning with set 1 is loaded with great acting, excellent photography and an emotionally packed story. These two sets are a keeper to be visited at least once a year

The saga of the Forsythes continues in part 2 of the saga, uninterrupted in it's production and dramatic presentation. The story only gets more complicated, as do the lives of all involved. Both 1 and 2 are a must for anyone's period piece collection. And even for those who are not collectors, it's still a beautiful series to have as rare and wonderful literature on DVD.

The recent dramatization of the "Forsyte Saga," and especially Part 2, makes it obvious that people who produce films for TV these days have a very low opinion of the audience. If you don't fill the thing with sex and violence, no one will watch it. There are people who dispute whether Galsworthy should have gotten the Nobel Prize for literature, but no one ever disputed the fact that he could turn out a good story, and his Forsyte novels had plenty of sex and violence simmering beneath the surface. The original "Forsyte Saga" has all the elements of a good old-fashioned page-turner, so why leave most of it out and invent material that is 100% worse than what Galsworthy wrote in the first place?

"The Forsyte Saga" Part 1 suffered from a poor adaptation to the screen, serious miscasting of the main characters, and tatty costumes and sets. "The Forsyte Saga," Part 2, is worse. Apparently the writers felt that no one in the 21st century could possibly accept the chaste romance between Jon and Fleur Forsyte, so they heated it up for the modern viewer, while making nonsense of Galsworthy's story. In the novels, Jon Forsyte was such an innocent and idealist that he confounded the self-centered and possessive Fleur. In this film, however, he has sex with Fleur (on the day of his father's funeral service, no less!), then breaks off his relationship because he wants to honor his dead father's wishes. Where is the innocent idealist now? And Fleur, whose main faults were being spoiled, possessive, and calculating, pursues Jon relentlessly and entices him into a sexual relationship to catch him once and for all. It's no wonder that this Fleur, when faced with rejection, ends up bawling like a wounded cow on the lawn at Robin Hill. If an author can be made to turn in his grave, Galsworthy must certainly have been spinning then!

But why stop there? Why turn Young Jolyon from a long-suffering monument to tolerance, whose family's indecision put him into the grave, into a tottering old fool who chews up the carpet in nearly every scene? Why is Soames Forsyte's devotion to his only daughter presented as faintly incestuous? Why does Soames have to nearly rape Irene for a second time, then more or less reconcile with her at the end and leave Robin Hill with a jaunty stride and a satisfied smile? Whose story is this anyhow?

It's almost impossible to evaluate the acting in the film because the tasteless story defeats the actors from the beginning. However, no one seems to age appropriately in the 20 years between Part 1 and Part 2 except Young Jolyon (Rupert Graves), who looks like a little boy playing dress-up in his grandfather's clothes. Emma Griffiths Malin does her best with the role of Fleur, but looks much too mature in comparison with Lee Williams as a very youthful Jon. Damien Lewis's Soames still looks as if he is about to suffer an apoplexy at any moment. Gina McKee is more convincing as the older Irene than in Part 1, but most of what she says and does has no relationship to the novels. Oliver Milburn makes an attractive Michael Mont, but his role is so abbreviated that it is a mystery why Fleur would think to turn to him on the rebound from Jon.

If you want to experience "The Forsyte Saga" at its best, you should read the novels, at least the first trilogy, which forms the basis for the 2 parts of this TV adaptation. If you'd rather watch the story on TV, get the original 1967 BBC series, which, despite its dated production values and not being shot in color, is faithful to Galsworthy's story and presents a compelling, well-acted drama.

If you really want to see this version of "The Forsyte Saga," do yourself a favor and rent it. These films are not "keepers."

Once again I must compare the acting and directing of this new version of the Saga with the original version of 1969.ALL of the characters in the new version are miscast.Soames is portrayed as too mean and too wooden.Young Jo is too young and uncharacteristically cruel.Irene is listless and wimpy.But the most jarring note is Fleur.She is portrayed as a spoiled brat,completely selfish and incredibly manipulative.Galsworthy's Fleur was no angel,but she had qualities of brightness and kindness as well.She also realizes that she is possessive and tells Michael so soon after they are married.However,the most jarring note of this production is the production itself.Part 1 departed greatly from the books to the detriment of the story.But Part 2 exceeds even that:it flings Galsworthy's narrative to the ground and dances upon it! Examples:Young Jo would NEVER go to Fleur,whom he mistrusts,and reveal the secret of his fatal illness.Irene would never scream at Jon and have an hysterical episode.Jon is too innocent to have sex with Fleur after his father's funeral.Soames would sooner die than tell Fleur about his dishonoring Irene.And Fleur would not turn into a screaming harpy when she loses Jon.Then:Soames and Irene patching it up and he leaving Robin Hill with a smile on his face and a spring in his step?PLEASE!The story is set in 1920,a different world from our own.The world portrayed is 2002,and it just doesn't wash.The original 1969 version got a huge audience from it's faithful adaptation and inspired acting.The new 2002 version has to rely on sex and violence to attract an audience.It seems that you can never go broke underestimating the taste of today's viewing public.If you want to own an outstanding version of the Saga,buy the dvd or video set of the original 1969 version.It's still available for purchase on Amazon.

I loved this movie even more than the first part. The first part deserves a five-star rating as well for great acting and story. Unlike many of the reviews I loved series two more than series one. By the time you have watched six episodes of Forsytes you will know them pretty well and as you watch Fluer and Jon try to unravel the mysteries of Forsyte History you can feel the emotions of every character and see where they are coming from. As a plus I am infatuated with the Jazz era. The clothes and the lifestyle are the backdrop for this eye-candy of a film. The diffenerces between generations is always an interesting subject and it is a re-accuring theme here. You see how London has changed, how Soames gasps at the revealing dresses his daughter wears, how Irene struggles to get her head around the new music and dancing. I have not read the book or seen the 60's versions of either series so I can give an unbiased opinion. I also can understand how sometimes in adaptations, certain things that work in print do not work on the screen, so it doesn't bother me when the screenwriters take liberties. On it's own aside from previous versions, this is a fantastic movie with a deeply rooted story, multi-faceted characters, beautiful costumes and production, and fabulous acting. Remember that most of the actors in this series have already played their respective characters for the epic first series and have mastered them. That is the beauty of this series. Some will complain that the characters are not significantly aged enough, but lets face it, many of these actors are supposed to span 40 years of their characters life between the two series, and make-up aging usually just looks frightening. At least this way you have the same skillful cast.