Customer Reviews

Noble House [VHS]

5 star:		(89)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Noble House is an eight-hour Classic TV Miniseries produced and broadcast in 1988 by NBC. Based on the fantastic and richly detailed novel of the same name by James Clavell, it features a large cast headlined by Pierce Brosnan, who portrays business tycoon Ian Dunross.

This was NBC's second Classic TV Miniseries adaptation of a Clavell novel, the first was 1980s Shogun. Both take place in the same fictional universe, Noble House even featuring connections to Shogun and yet another Clavell novel, Tai-Pan.

For this miniseries, the timeframe of the original novel was changed from the early 1960s to the 1980s.

Other actors include Denholm Elliott, Deborah Raffin, Tia Carrere, John Houseman, Julia Nickson-Soul, and John Rhys-Davies (who also appeared in Shogun.)

Noble House centers around big-business piracy in Hong Kong. The miniseries opens with Brosnan driving through the rain to meet Denholm Elliott, who plays the outgoing "tai-pan" in Hong Kong's oldest and leading trading firm: Struan & Company.

"Tai-pan," a Cantonese expression, means "supreme leader," and at Struan & Company the title has been passed down at least 150 years

Dunross' arch rival and enemy, Quillan Gornt (Rhys-Davles), is tai-pan of the second leading trading company. Not only does Gornt wants to destroy Dunross and take over Noble House, the two men have racing horses that compete against each other as well.

Meanwhile, two American tycoons (Raffin and Ben Masters) have come to Hong Kong to make a financial deal with Dunross.

But in Clavell's Hong Kong there is no such thing as a single deal. Double-dealing and triple-crossing are more the style of the international wheeler-dealers here.

Diverse players here include bankers, government officials, police and a man called "Four Finger Wu" (Khigh Dhiegh), who runs an opium-smuggling syndicate from a junk boat in Aberdeen Harbor and has a mistress one-third his age named Venus Poon (Carrere).

The eight hours practically sizzle, thanks to Bercovici's articulate script (he also wrote the script for the Shogun miniseries).

Viewers a treated to a manipulated run on a bank, selling short on the stock market, the fixing of horse races, a kidnaping, seductions and murders. Running counterpoint are the burning and sinking of a floating restaurant and a catastrophic landslide.

Add to this a couple of juicy love stories, especially the one between Brosnan and Raffin (who brings a light comic element to her role as the tough wheeler-dealer), while everything is done in ravishing cars, speedboats, mansions and casinos.

But, the biggest and brightest star of the show is clearly Hong Kong, which is more like a video game than a city, filled with the exotica and intrigue that you used to find in old movies. Early in the show, a character who's just landed at the airport asks, "What's that smell?" His host answers, "That's the smell of money."

The $16-million-plus production included eight weeks of exteriors shot in Hong Kong and another eight for interiors in the De Laurentiis studio in Wilmington, N.C.

Highly recommended.

Why do the DVD producers cut favorite scenes out of classic miniseries? This has been a family favorite since it first aired on television, and we have been waiting to purchase it on DVD for years! We would gladly have paid more to have the COMPLETE miniseries. Instead, the DVD producers decided to arbitrarily cut several favorite scenes out of the 2 disc set. The horse race, the trip to China to visit his friend in the China bank... these and several others are gone. I am torn between wanting to return the DVD in protest and promising the production company I will buy it again and pay more if they would only release the original, perfectly wonderful, miniseries. What I won't be doing is buying additional copies of this DVD for friends and family who have long wanted to see it again. They don't deserve such disappointment.

Noble House is an outstanding story about big business, Hong Kong
and politics laced with intrigue and romance.
Ian Dunross, played by Pierce Brosnan, is the powerful leader of the history laden Noble House. His performance is nothing less than spectacular as it weaves through one exciting plot after another.
This story is so riveting that you'll watch it again and again.
I enjoy it so much that my VHS copy is no longer any good. I sincerely hope it is reprduced on DVD very soon.

The "Noble House" miniseries is a very cool adaptation of the James Clavell novel of the same name. The novel is complex and convoluted, and this miniseries actually does a stellar job of telling essentially the same story as the novel in a more linear fashion, which is essential to the miniseries medium.

Pierce Brosnan, head of the Struan Clan and Tai-Pan of the Noble House, sets the standard for being suave and sophisticated--his portrayal of the Tai-Pan in my opinion is absolutely perfect. John Rhys-Davies as Gornt, the descendant of Brock, the Struan Clan's ancient enemy, crude and barbaric but also sophisticated, makes a perfect contrast with the elegant Brosnan. They seem like born adversaries. (We all remember Davies as the Portuguese navigator in Shogun.)

This is a captivating miniseries. Set in Hong Kong, it is the story of a Clan feud between two powerful British shipping firms there, both of which have been based in Hong Kong since its founding as a British Crown colony. In fact, "Noble House" is the sequel to "Tai-Pan" which is the story of the founding of Hong Kong and of the Noble House. The whole story is great fun, sort of a "Dallas" in a Hong Kong setting (this is not a put-down--I loved Dallas!) The film manages to make the combat of high finance easy to follow and understand, and this is a fascinating story.

The DVD is well-mastered, and I particularly like the soundtrack of this one. Highly recommended.

I am surprised this has not been release on DVD - It was such a successful and inspiring series - I hope it is released soon on DVD - It is released on an Australian DVD - but cannot be played except on a multi-region DVD player.

I viewed this while living in Sydney and was glued all the way through. To me this is when Pierce Brosnan came to light as a really great actor. The storyline is very gripping. It's a must if you can get a hold of the DVD to see it from start to finish.

This mini-series that stars Pierce Brosnan and John Rhys-Davies is available on DVD in Region 4 for only about $15. So, if you love this show and want to see it on DVD then I recommend picking up the digitally remastered region 4 DVD and popping it into your region-free DVD player.
UPDATE: The title has since arrived on DVD in Region 1.

Having all of Clavell's books, I revel in the movies made from his writings. He earlier brought SHOGUN to the screen, and for 4 nights in February, 1988, he aired the last show he produced. Starting on Sunday February 21st through Wednesday, February 24th, NOBLE HOUSE fought for ratings against the 1988 Winter Olympics taking place on another TV channel. For true fans of the late Clavell we miss new books coming off the presses. I lived in Japan for 25 months so SHOGUN has to be my favorite, with NOBLE HOUSE and TAI-PAN only an eyelash close seconds.

Starting with TAI-PAN in 1841 this epic of the trading house Dirk Struan founded is brought up to date, 1963. The entire action of the 1200+ novel takes place in little more than one week. As in TAI-PAN the struggle between the two trading houses of Struan and Brock continues.

The script of NOBLE HOUSE is well written, with the action moving swiftly along. The mix of characters provides a veteran group, and since a deal for Pierce Brosnan to star in a James Bond movie had fallen through, he was available for one of his last TV appearances. He stated at the time of filming of NOBLE HOUSE that he was going to move away from both stage and TV, wanting to make movies. He and John Rhys-Davies had worked together previously. With relaxed conditions on the sets, all went well with this production.

The TV movie has,however, come under some complaint from both viewers and critics alike, but for me the movies made from James Clavell's books are lasting gifts given us from the author. The reviewer from TV Guide at the time, Don Merrill, "kicked the stuffings out of this miniseries" saying NOBLE HOUSE "furnished with just about everything a melodrama could possibly contain-except characters that come to life". Obviously he was no fan of Clavell's writings and possibly he had not read TAI-PAN. It is quite possible to watch this movie without having read either of the two books, but what a knowledge gained from these two books will provide is not only an understanding of this long standing feud to the death between these two houses but also some understanding of just what drives the personalites themselves, persons always concerned with their families' tradition going back into the mid 1840's, love as well as hate. It's not so much money or greed driving these folks, but just plain cold hatred. They want to destroy each other.

In the second night's drama the fire aboard the floating restaurant happens, and even Don Merrill of TV Guide termed that "a dilly of a fire'. So too the horse race, and many other activities of this movie as well.

What a great mini-series. Long live NOBLE HOUSE and TAI-PAN.

Semper Fi.

The Noble House mini-series is one of the best screen adaptations of a multi-layered character driven story I have had the pleasure of viewing. I currently own the series on VHS and await its release on DVD. The screen adaptation varies slightly form the Clavell novel, by way of avoiding one or two subplots; nevertheless it does bring forward a vivid look into the world high stakes business and politics in modern day Hong Kong. For the individual interested in Wall Street type epics and the world of power business, Noble House is a definite must see. The series is lead by an excellent cast who seem like they were meant to play their roles, powerfully led by Pierce Brosnan as Ian Dunross the Tai Pan of the Noble House.

This is one of the best TV miniseries ever made! It is quite difficult to portray the essence of a GREAT book on TV, and perhaps the fact that James Clavell (author of the 2 Volume book) took an active roll when making this movie helped a lot in its success.
Since Shogun, James Clavell became known as one of the best writers of all time. It all started with Tai-Pan, in the 19th Century with the birth of a commercial company which later became known as "The Noble House". In this new episode, James Clavell takes back the story to the "present day: 1980's(in the book is the 1960's) and portrays one of the most thrilling and vivid stories ever made.

Hong Kong serves as a scenery to this non-stop drama story where everything happens so fast, with the most realistic environment and characters...the Honor and survival of the Noble House is at a stake once again. The "old" friends, the enemies, China, even the most insignificant habitant of Hong Kong will affect the future of things to come in an unexpected way.

An excellent cast for an excellent film.

You won't regret it!!!