Good start, but then it gets ruined

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Blistering performances.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I love the books and this adaptation is fairly accurate although it ends way too soon. Some of the characters are just as I pictured them. A few annoyed me, especially the characters of Sybil and Rachel, both such martyrs. Also, the role of Diana, as in the book she seemed much softer and kind of helpless, not the way she was presented here. But that is mostly a quibble against the book. Mostly it is an engaging story of an upper class family before and during WWII. (Rupert is a bit wimpy too.)I wish they had not ended it the way they did, as the final book tied up many loose ends.

I have loved the series of books that this miniseries is based on for years, and when I saw the shows were available on VHS, I purchased them right away. I thought the miniseries was just excellent. The characters were portrayed just as I pictured them when reading the books. The English countryside is simply beautiful, and the Cazalets' estate is perfect-looking. The shows stay quite true to the books' storyline, and my only complaint is that the issue of Rupert being missing in the war is not resolved by the end of the film. All the actors gave terrific performances, particularly young Florence Hoath as Clary Cazalet. She gives a powerful performance and is a very talented young actress.I highly recommend this miniseries, especially if you have read and enjoyed the books by Elizabeth Jane Howard.

...I'm afraid I missed that altogether.The series has just finished its run on ABC-TV in Australia. I just can't recall what the point or plot of the series was. It drifted through a series of charming 1940s vignettes (far removed from the realities of the war) but never developed any action, any interest, or anything much at all. It sort of fizzled out in about 1942 with a pointless wedding. That bridal dress must have used a ton of coupons.As pointed out in another review there were some glaring errors. (i) despite having their timber business bombed out by the Germans the Casulets managed to keep on with their luxurious middle class life with nary a blip. Even kept the servants on. Hardly did a lick of work at business, before or after the bombing - obviously one of those wonderful self-managing operations. (ii) Never was the tranquility of their splendiferous rural retreat disturbed by the passage of hundreds of low-flying aircraft overhead. Couldn't have been anywhere in the south. (iii) Always bright sunshine, even in the depths of winter. (iv) The airfield, with a single fighter that taxied back and forth, was a manicured bowling green. A rutted quagmire would have been realistic. The windows were always spotlessly clean and never fogged up.On the other hand, perhaps this is what WWII was like for those with pots of money -- a bit of a doddle.Summary: 4 out of 10. A tremendous disappointment. "Dad's Army" is more plausible than "The Cazalets".

The new PBS series "The Cazalets" is billed as a latter day "Upstairs Downstairs." It isn't. The characters are far less finely formed and the first episode was a back to back (well, front to front) series of graphic sexual couplings. Set in England on the eve of WW2, it appears that nobody in the British Isles did anything in 37 and 38 other than bonk each other. Marital sex. Extra marital sex. Violent sex. Lesbian sex. Even incest. And this was only episode one! What can we expect in coming weeks? Kinky sex? SM sex? Bestiality? Really! This is not the mandate of either PBS or BBC. There are x-rated channels for such voyeurism.The first episode also has some glaring errors. The word "flak" is used twice. A German acronym for "fliegerabwehrkanonen" or "anti aircraft guns", it entered the language only in the early years of the war and would have been in no-one's vocabulary in 37 and 38.The first episode also shows the servants gathered around a small radio listening to Neville Chamberlain's address. Small radios were rare in 1938 and they certainly were not in plastic cases. There also appear to be no antenna or ground wires, essential elements of the receivers of the period. I spotted these two errors because they fall within my knowledge. How many others might there also have been?It's an interesting snapshot of an interesting period of history. But like most snapshots, it was done without much thought or artistry.