This excellent series starts slowly and takes several episodes to really get off the ground, but patience is rewarded because the series becomes quite engrossing. Most of the acting is excellent, with many of the "Usual Suspects" of BBC/Masterpiece Theater productions. Central to the whole drama are Phillip Lathan as Plantagenet Palliser and Susan Hampshire as PP's wife, Lady Glencora. Past the first few episodes they are rarely at the center of the goings on, but they provide a dramatic constant and help hold the rather sprawling series together. The focus of the series, like Trollope's "Palliser" novels, moves from one series of characters and events to another. While this makes "The Pallisers" a bit jumpy and episodic, it does provide variety and keeps the very long miniseries from getting stale. My personal favorite series of episodes are those in which Phineas Finn is tried for murder; there are some wonderful courtroom scenes. If you like period drama, this is just the ticket for you.

Does anyone know why the beautiful narration by Greer Garson was removed from the DVD? I too loved the series and want to watch it again but with the narration and cannot locate a VHS or DVD with it.I remember looking forward to every Sunday evening with Alistair Cooke and The Pallisers. Wonderful. We would sip sherry and not speak for one hour.The cast, in my view, was brilliant. The costumes authentic and because of the way in was filmed in 1974, I felt I was watching and enjoying live theatre. This would be a brilliant class project for students in a high school. To hear beautiful English spoken and watch a tale of long ago unfold each week for a whole term. Marvelous.

As an adaptation of Anthony Trollope's brilliant Palliser series, I fail to see how this production could have been any worse. What appears to have happened (this is pure speculation) is that someone unfamiliar with Trollope's work hired novelist Simon Raven to write the series, and Raven decided that Trollope didn't know how to tell his own stories and that he -- Raven -- would tell better ones using the same character names.For those who have read the books, here is a partial list of reasons why you should steer very clear of this regrettable "adaptation" (spoilers ahead). The following appalling things happen in the TV series: Phineas Finn is sleeping with Mary Flood Jones, and marries her only because she gets pregnant.The love between Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Dumbello is based entirely on their mutual interest in decimal coinage.Lady Glencora gets a big long death scene.Dolly Longstaffe is a friend of Lady Glencora's.The elder Duke of Omnium is a dirty old man who pinches his nurse.Burgo Fitzgerald is ugly, and for some bizarre reason, he and his aunt appear to be on the verge of going to bed together.Almost all of the casting is way off the mark.All of that delicious, true-to-life dialog, that is a large part of the fun of reading Trollope and that adapts so well to the screen, has been eliminated, and replaced with glib pseudo-witticisms and cheap innuendos.All of the novels' thoughtful and searching treatment of character has been drained away and replaced with a lot of utterly uninteresting people in drably sensational situations. The plots have been altered and the emotional interest removed entirely.This is a very, very incomplete list of things Raven changed -- not one of them for the better. Raven also added no end of scenes of stupid hijinks which not only are not in any of the books, but are not engaging in any way themselves.All told, this production is a shabby and disrespectful treatment of some truly great novels, and has little merit as anything else. I was excited when I first found out that the Pallisers had been adapted for the screen as a miniseries. I figured, with such great material to work with, how bad can it be? The answer is, *astoundingly* bad. If you admire Trollope even dimly, stay very far away from this utter stinkbomb. If you want to see a Trollope novel adapted to the screen with both fidelity and artistic competence, see Masterpiece Theatre's recent production of *He Knew He Was Right*.

This series was a huge undertaking, of a sort that probably would not be attempted today. It was an adaptation of Trollope's "Palliser" novels, and dealt with a great many characters and intertwining plots. The series worked best for viewers who could take an interest in the fictional politics of the time, as Plantagenet Palliser, like most of the men in the story, is a politician and this theme runs throughout the series. However, Susan Hampshire as Lady Glencora, his mismatched wife, provides a romantic strain as well, though she eventually adopts her husbands concerns and interests as her own. The story from time to time veers away from these two main characters, and becomes quite entertaining as it delves into the complicated life of the scheming Lizzy Eustace, and also that of the greenhorn politician from Ireland, Phineas Phinn. His problems with women and his trial for murder (including a cross-examination in Latin!) are among the most interesting and enjoyable passages in the series. This is a thoroughly entertaining series for those who can just relax into the Victorian atmosphere and are not in a hurry to get to the end.