Please don't spend money on this.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Am I Missing Something?

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

All the actors look good, the English seem to have superior ability to show period history to Americans.I found the anti-Catholic attitudes and depictions convincing, the showing of the ghastly punishments of the time on the parts of English and Spanish were believable and hard to watch. But there is some apparent filler material, particularly scenes where a priest who is party to the conspiracy is arrested and being 'put to the question' (tortured). The conspirators 'rescue' him. Was that historical or just inserted sub-plot? Sometimes the dramatic swordplay made me think of "Game of Thrones". The acting was uninspired, encouraged by uninspired writing. The only depth of personality I picked up was from Mark Gatiss, playing spymaster Lord Robert Cecil. I felt that the context and the persons and the events were not clearly enough delineated to make the history as clear as it could have been, sacrificed for the violence and action of the 'show'. History parlayed into entertainment. The music was lugubrious and unmemorable.

The first episode was very promising, the historical inaccuracies excusable for dramatic licence. Not so the two utterly false and apparently deliberate errors in the other 2 episodes. First the claim that a priest Fr John Gerard participated in the plot, which the BBC only just recently apologised for and re-edited another show "Elizabeth I's secret agents", only to now do it again. And secondly the depiction that the Spanish Ambassador found out about the plot from another priest and then reported it to the fiendishly anti-Catholic Lord Cecil. Both done presumably to make the story more "interesting". Totally unnecessary. Just tell the real story! It's gripping! the naivete of the conspirators letting the letter warning of the explosion to be sent to Monteagle because they thought it was vague enough that Cecil's agent's wouldn't guess. And separately the incredible true story of Fr John Gerard, who rather than the naive young priest relying on others to rescue him, escaped from the Tower (by climbing a rope strung across the moat, not crawling out a drain as sdepicted here) and spent years disguised as a fashionably dressed gambler whilst ministerig to his flock and having numerous hair's breadth escapes.

I guess I don't understand why you would make a historical docu-drama about overmatched and overpowered figures that fail miserably at every decision and action they take, culminating in their horrific termination. I guess we're supposed to be entertained watching the evil villains repeatedly win with smug faces. Then end the series with literally no conception as to how these peoples ill-fated efforts ever helped anyone or thing in the course of history. Maybe they did, but this series offers none of that. Just brutally depressing, and The End.

Yet another series that is basically the SAME formula seen in EVERY series these days. Let's see how much torture, violence and gore we can show. Then make sure you stretch out the violence much as possible, showing every single moment of pain. Boring because you can pretty much find the same thing in every new show these days.The story-line is incidental, it's all an excuse for the violent parts.