Customer Reviews

In Search of the Trojan War

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This is, without a doubt, one of the best historical documentaries ever made. In Search of the Trojan War combines archaeological adventure, historical investigation and a charming presentation by historian Michael Wood to bring to life one of the best known Greek legends: the Trojan War. Sifting through vast sources of information, from the ancient to the contemporary, visiting fabled cities, and walking on the footsteps of the people of times past Michael Wood discards speculation to present an objective view on the history of the city of Troy.
Made in 1987 by PBS and the BBC, this six-part documentary is still the most complete and vivid depiction of Troy ever presented in television. Each one of the original episodes deals with a particular topic regarding Troy and the Trojan War as explained below:
*The Age of Heroes: presents the many legends and myths of the ancient Greeks, where they came from, the ways they influenced everyday life, and how life ordinarily went on in the Greek world during this historical period.
*The Legend Under Siege: presents the pioneering men, both believers and skeptics, who followed Greek myths into their historical past, discovering legendary cities, awe-inspiring treasures and important cultural facts, and, in the process, creating the science of archaeology.
*The Singer of Tales: presents as detailed a biography on Homer as the information about him permits - including a pleasant and entertaining look at the very old and almost unchanged art of the bard poets - and a detailed analysis of his epic: The Iliad.
*The Women of Troy: traces the evidence that places Trojan women on Greek mainland as the probable result of their abduction by victorious Greeks after the War, giving strong historical support to Homer's tale.
*The Empire of Hittites: presents the commercial and political connections between the Trojans and the Hittites as recorded in Hittite clay tablets and other historical records, validating further Homer's account of the Trojan War.
*The Fall of Troy: presents the conclusions drawn from the historical facts about the reality of the Trojan War, its legend and its heroes.
Not only does this documentary include every bit of information you could ever hope to find about the city of Troy itself and its many legends, it also includes information on Greek writing systems and alphabets, other important Greek myths and legends, and the birth of archaeology. If you are a history buff looking for an archaeological armchair adventure, the Indiana Jones type at heart or simply searching for an entertaining way to brush-up on your Trojan history, buy this documentary. I assure you that you will love it.
I would recommend reading the documentary's companion book "In Search of the Trojan War" by Michael Wood for an excellent bibliography to fuel further personal research. The book also includes an updated chapter that presents discoveries made on this topic since 1984 and not included in the documentary, which will not only complement what you'll explore in it, but will also make the conclusions presented on its last episode seem more likely to be correct. Enjoy!
--Reviewed by M. E. Volmar

This is one of the best presentations concerning the Trojan War. In a clear and erudite manner Michael Wood has made a documentary that touched on all aspects of the war itself and the late bronze age world.

He makes history "come alive" and his use of experts and locales are fascinating. I especially loved the episode about Homer and the bardic traditions.

The music is also stirring and adds to rather than detracts from the series. Whether you are a casual ancient history student or a Trojan War fanatic, this series will appeal to you. It makes all the films about the war (even the newest one, despite Brad Pitt) seem a waste of time. None of them catches the true story and spirit of the age as does Michael Wood in this wonderful program.

This one is a milestone in TV historical documentary making!

After twenty years this documentary keeps all its freshness and still is easily the best cinematic account on the Trojan War. If not for the slight image discoloration, the East Berlin scenes, the cars and the clothing, this series could have been made today. All the facts, ideas and interpretations presented here are strikingly new and haven't been superseded yet.
Besides the recent find of the Treasure of Troy in the Putshkin Museum in Russia, the only missing info (included nevertheless in the included interview with Michael Wood) is that from the recent German-American excavations which changed the accepted scale of the city and its surroundings in Bronze Age times.
The documentary has a pace and an atmosphere of its own, succeeding in being both highly informative and highly entertaining: a golden association VERY difficult to achieve! This is one of the increasingly rare series which makes the viewer repeat the experience over and over!
Using common sense, solid documental sources and interviews with some of the foremost experts of the day, Michael Wood shows awesome communication skills in informing and carrying away the viewer, spreading his contagious enthusiasm for the theme but keeping always an unbiased scientific stance. This, together with excellent photography, superb editing and highly suggestive music creates a spell which makes the enduring of the six one-hour episodes surprisingly agreeable and additive. All this with very limited use of crude scale models and 80's glorious 2D low-res computer graphics!

This should be a lesson to some "historical" documentary makers of today who make excessive use of fancy (but sometimes very unreliable) 3d graphic "reconstitutions" and of re-enactors with inaccurate outfits and ridiculous choreography to "improve" on mediocre presentations and bad scripts.

1st DVD:
1- The Age of Heroes: The story of the Trojan War. The lost treasure of Troy. Account of Heinrich Schliemann's life and research on Troy.
2- The Legend under Siege: Wilhelm Dörpfeld research. Arthur Evans' discoveries and theories. Carl Blegen's findings, the Linear-B deciphering and the role of both in Trojan War credibility.
3- The Singer of Tales: The role and long time fidelity of oral traditions. Homer's reliability challenged.

2nd DVD
4- The Women of Troy: Plundering in Bronze Age. The taking of women and children as slaves and their economic and political role. The recent African slavery parallel.
5- Empire of the Hittites: Decisive documental evidence from the Hittites. Recurrent conflicts with the Mycenaeans.
6- The Fall of Troy: The Trojan conflict and the Mediterranean late Bronze Age collapse.
- Interview with Michael Wood: A good epilog for the series!
- Michael Wood's Photo Journal of Troy

This two DVD set contains the complete series together with a 2004 interview with Michael Wood in the British Museum which makes a good updated epilog to the series.

This is a MUST for every person, specially those interested in History (World-Military-Mediterranean-Aegean-Bronze Age), Greek Mythology, Oral traditions, Homeric epics, and Documentary Making.

If you really want to know the down and dirty about Homers tale, then you hit the jackpot. Mr. Wood in an obvious labor of love, goes forth in finding out if there really was a War on that windy hill in Western Asia Minor. The trail is a long and windy one from the Gold Fields of California, to Berlin and Greece. With a cast of characters that rivial a Chinese Opera. Altogether its well worth the money.

I'm laughing as I write this because... Well, it's a long, disjointed story.

When my wife and I first got married, money was tight and mobility was low, and one of my favorite ways to while away a Sunday afternoon was to stick in the off-air tape I had made of PBS's first run of 'In Search of the Trojan War.' (The only way it was available back then.) Which used to drive my wife nuts because A) I probably did watch it a bit too frequently, and B) she'd much rather have watched a football game. Or a baseball game. Or golf. (Sports nut.)

Seventeen years have gone by. Money's maybe a little less tight. The TV has grown to 51 inches, and the VCR has been supplanted by a DVD player. And somewhere I saw that 'ISotTW' was now available on DVD! Log onto Amazon... Search... "Hey, hon, did you know 'In Search of the Trojan War' is out on DVD?'

'Do you want it?' she asked.

'Well, _yeah_!'

'Don't order it. You'll end up with two. Happy Father's Day.'

It's good enough that I'm really looking forward to seeing it again, nearly twenty years after it came out, for the [mumble]-teenth time.

It can't compare to my wife, though.

I saw this back in 1985 when if first came out. It was wonderful. At first, I thought it was going to be one of those historical/tourist shows. But it wasn't. It could have been, though.
Mr. Wood is a very charismatic presenter. But is what's better is that he took the story of the story of the Trojan War from the pages of modern myth to reality. I have read Homer and I knew about Schlieman, but other than that, I was ignorant of the Trojan War.
Mr. Wood started with what a regular person knew about the war and then took it into deeper level. I was fascinated by the connection he made to the Hittite Empire. The thought had never occurred to me that if a Troy did exist, it might have trade relations with empires to the east. He also included experts in the fields of archeology, modern history and history of the period.
I thouroughly enjoyed the dvd and have seen it several times. I also have the Alexander dvd and Shakepeare. "In Search of Shakespeare", was fun. Wood took the story of Shakespeare down to the center of his human story.

I would recommend all the Wood "In Search of..." programs. If you can't find the films, then read the books. The books are just are entertaining.

Seeing this series brought me back to my University of California history classes with Erich Gruen, one of the finest classical scholars in the English-speaking world. If you are an ancient history buff, you probably know who he is. In his classes, we didn't simply learn about names, dates, and the "headlines" of events, but were taught to investigate original source material and do our own analysis of the historical facts. All popular histories are colored by the biases of the writers. As they say, "history is written by the victors." Michael Wood's Trojan War series is approached from the point of view of the professional historian. He uses Homer's Iliad as his first guide. Any historical study of the Trojan War begins with Homer. Then he examines Homer's references to place names, events, etc. The section on the "Catalog of the Ships" is simply brilliant. He even travels to Thisbe and checks to see if there really are a lot of pigeons there! He refers to making over 40 trips to different places in the Aegean to check Homeric references against surviving artifacts and geographical landmarks. And this happens in the first episode. This type of investigative and insightful research is present throughout the series. In all, it is a truly scholarly effort of the highest quality. It presents all that we currently know of what happened at Troy during the 13th Century.

I really enjoyed watching this program. The quality of the material is outstanding. There are no distractions. No "Hollywood" style heroic music or modern actors "playing" history. Everything in this movie is real, based on research, up to the highest scientific standards. It's as closed to the truth about that war as you can get.

The program is over 20 years old, and suprisingly it makes it better. 20 years is a lot of most of us, and you can see how different life was in mid 80s from this program. The people were different, towns, cars. But it's nothing for the Great Troy. The memories of those days have made it through thousands of years and they still excite people the same way as they did 20 years, a hundred or 2 500 years ago. This is truly amazing how that ancient war from Bronze Age era is still capturing our imagination.

Overall, this is probably the best program about the Trojan War you can find. It may look a little bit old, slow and low tech. But no other program coms close to the amount of imformation, it's quality and the feeling of getting through the time and the spirit of exploration. Highly, highly recommended!

One of the really better documentaries on the ancient world, it explores the history of the excavations of Troy and some theories as to why the war happened. Michael Wood is a charming and engaging host who really brings it to life. If you've watched any of the recent PBS Empires Series, this is very comparable. If History Channel ran it it would be impressive. If you want to be entertained and learn something in the bargain, go for it.

This is a superb and fascinating journey through the time , Michael Woods makes an exhaustive investigation about the Troy war , seeking restless the clues , the questions from fundamental places . The scenes are loaded with dyonisiac enthusiasm and linked by clever interviews and arresting landscapes .
The multiple issues derivated from the study , the analysis and the common sense all along these six chapters will let you in a reflexive state about the Troy war in itself and the timeless and countless historical references ; it is impossible for any human being who belings to the Western World not watching this extraordinary multidisciplinary document., because its consequences go far beyond the a simple historic search .