Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

whidbeydanielg This is a 4 1/2 hour film about a voyage from England to Australia. On board is a young English gentleman who writes about his voyage.At first his writings are distant and objective. But as the voyage progresses, and he learns about the sea and about a world he could not imagine (and other people who he had never been around), his writings become more personal.Nobody is a hero. Everybody just "is." The acting is superb, especially by Benedict Cumberbatch and Jared Harris, the Captain. There is no fake drama on-board. The Captain is not a Captain Bligh.Instead, it is a creaky old man-o-war trying to get to Australia on its last legs. Months at sea in a cramped space around the same old people.Because there are no glorious battles the voyage is, in some ways, as slow for the viewer as it is for the sailors and passengers. But never boring.The series has a heart. It is lovely, exciting, and interesting. Cumberbatch, in an early role, displays the talent that we have come to expect from him in recent years. He carries the show.It is a must watch. One of the best things we have watched in years.

jackrawlins I found this mini-series unwatchable. All the people are various degrees of appalling, so there is no one to care about. The shipboard scenes are gritty, so if you think dirt equals authenticity, you'll love it, but I was completely unconvinced. The ship is absurdly roomy and often deserted, and the crew completely without discipline and often drunk, which ship's companies simply were not allowed to be. Cumberbatch is his usual icy, callous self, which works for others but not for me. Scenes of ship handling, sail handling, or the logistics of ship governance are almost nonexistent. The focus is entirely on the middle-class boors, hypocrites, and prigs who make up the paying passengers. The precise opposite of the splendid Master and Commander, this series seems to set out to document exactly how repulsive and boring ship voyages in the Napoleon era could be.

TheLittleSongbird To The Ends of the Earth is truly incredible. I watched it having been so impressed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the brilliant Sherlock. And he doesn't disappoint here, in fact once again in a performance wider in range perhaps than Sherlock he is amazing, as are the support actors. And it does help that the characters are well developed and that you care for them.To The Ends of the Earth also has some wonderful production values. You can never go wrong with luscious photography, gorgeous scenery and settings and sumptuous costumes, with a period detail so evocative you feel you are there living the moment(the first series I've seen do that since The Crimson Petal and the White). To The Ends of the Earth has all of this, and also a music score that is beautiful, haunting and rousing and never undermines or overshadows the drama/action.The story is rich, narrative-wise and thematically and always absorbing, and the dialogue intelligent and thoughtful while never feeling stilted. Overall, it is incredible and a must see. 10/10 Bethany Cox

tomm-25 Factual errors abound in this sea tale about which the English should know better.A southbound ship "canting to the right" in a westerly? That is the windward side (the ship would "cant" to the lee). This exemplifies the lack of detail attended-to by the producers and director. Narrowly escaping a lee shore in the nick of time? Not with the visuals with which we were provided. The "false keel" coming away from the ship?Navigation so poor that the ship is so far south that it entirely evades the notoriously dangerous South American cape? A singer asking for and receiving a musical cue of a fifth instead of a tonic?There is plenty more in this "romantic" bildungsroman to yank the nautically and musically astute out of their suspension of disbelief.Moreover, the entire second episode or "nite" (out of three) is a goofy soap opera. The last five minutes make me wish that they had all found their end on the lee shore ice. Yecchhh! I wonder how closely it followed the Golding novel upon which it is supposedly based? C.S. Forrester and Patrick O'Brian are U.K. writers who DID get the nauticals right to the nth detail.However, it wasn't a total loss. Victoria Hamilton's tears are just as effective here as they were in Ian Holm's King Lear in which she was a formidable and heart-rending Cordelia. Hers is one of the strongest characterisations in this film. Jared Harris was a splendid Captain Anderson, and Benedict Cumberbatch acquitted himself well in the role of the "main character."Half-heartedly recommended.