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    Empires - Queen Victoria's Empire

    SBS/Roadshow Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 219 mins . E . PAL

      Feature
    Contract

    Queen Victoria's Empire is a four-part doco of high quality. It's well researched and scripted, and not afraid to highlight specific points in history in a dramatic, totally enthralling way.

    Narrated in relatively dispassionate style by Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, the milestones and events in this history unfold in a manner which is anything but dispassionate.

    Episode One, Engines of Change, introduces us to the young Victoria at the start of her reign, and to her consort, Prince Albert. Albert's ideas about Empire were all about technology and trade - no brute conquest, but rather an empire based on mercantile advantage.

    The next episode, Passage to India, deals with the addition to Queen Victoria's crown of her most precious jewel, India. And it traces, for the first time, the bloody battles encountered as Britain developed the greatest Empire the world has ever seen.

    Episode Three, The Moral Crusade, brings us the Empire after its principal architect of peace, Prince Albert, had died. With his guidance lost, Victoria found herself at the mercy of two bitterly opposed political giants - Disraeli, a gung-ho empire expansionist, and Gladstone, a moderate who believed that the drive for Empire was morally wrong and potentially corrupt.

    While debate at home raged between these two points of view, the great explorer Doctor Livingstone was exploring the vast continent of Africa. He hoped to bring Christian enlightenment to the people he found. Instead, he was just the precursor to subjugation.

    The final episode, The Scramble for Africa, brings us the discoveries of gold and diamonds, the murder of Africans and destruction of their tribal societies, and the growing conflict between English settlers and Boers. Above all, it traces the path of one of the most evil Englishmen in modern history, Cecil Rhodes, founder of what was known as Rhodesia, who was willing to subject all Africans to slavery to help build his personal fiefdom - in the name of Empire. His quest for wealth and power ironically helped bring about the end of British influence in South Africa - the first stage in the eventual dissolution of the entire British Empire. That started to happen just as Queen Victoria was dying. With nice symmetry, she passed away in the very first month of the 20th century.

    This account of her Empire and the beginning of its dissolution is admirably told, and splendidly re-enacted. It brings a major part of our recent history to life, with verve and a very real sense of drama. Great for adults - and it would serve wonderfully in schools.

      Video
    Contract

    I've described this as full screen. In fact, it's cropped very slightly top and bottom to present a marginally widescreen appearance, somewhere between Academy and 1:1.59.

    For a production made for television, film quality is fine, with good colour delineation and tonal values.

      Audio
    Contract

    The basic Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack is more concerned with narration and telling a story than with atmospheric music or sound effects. It is well recorded and dialogue is reproduced with good clarity.

      Extras
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    There are no extra features.

      Overall  
    Contract

    If you have an interest in history or in this period, this is a compelling view of an era with which we Australians were intimately connected. Professor David Flint would probably argue we're still intimately connected to Victoria's empire, but we all know about him...


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      And I quote...
    "A great presentation of a period in history with which Australia was intimately connected. "
    - Anthony Clarke
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