Rhodes

'Rhodes' takes its place alongside 'The Last Place on Earth' and 'The Jewel in the Crown' as one of the very best British-made series sagas. It has everything: masterful performances (it's Martin Shaw's show, of course, but everyone shines), a sweeping, informative and intelligent script, a magnificent score - reminiscent of John Barry, superb locations, and a whale of a story, a true story.

The character of Cecil Rhodes is thoroughly and fulfillingly fleshed out. He is scarcely admirable, but he commands our attention for sheer audaciousness and dramatic power. The exploitation and double-crossing of the native peoples is portrayed with accuracy and grim detail, with many parallels to the American West. Rhodes was an opportunist and an empire builder in the extreme, who stopped at nothing to achieve his goals. As an epic character study, this drama really delivers as only the Brits can.

Finally, a common complaint: no DVD version exists as if yet. If more viewers discovered this series, it would quickly be known as a classic.

I have known Rhodes to be the father of oppression in southern Africa. A man of his time maybe, but one who did so much to create so much suffering, that I thought it impossible, that a biopic of him would fascinate me, but it did. Here we see a man driven by ambition, by disgust over his fellow humans, white or black. He is portrayed not as a person with whom you would like to identify yourself, but whose inner workings and motivations you want to know. This is the true greatness of the script. It entices you to involve yourself with a man, who stands wholeheartedly for a thoroughly black page in history.

coupled to that it is a superb costume drama, with well developed secondary characters of whom I would like to mention by name: Ken Stott as Barney Barnato

To sum it up. This film will not make you hate Rhodes any less than you did before, but it does help you to understand the fascination he created in his own day.

Again. why isn't this out on DVD yet? I saw this when it aired on Masterpiece in Jan. 1998, and I've never forgotten it, but obviously Masterpiece Theater has. It is British History, with all the dirt, blood, injustice that went along with it. An "incredible" portrayal of how it was, very well produced, acted, and musically scored. Is Masterpiece afraid to put this out there again, with it's "undercurrent" of homosexuality, and colonialism at all cost, or do they just prefer not to remember a piece of their history they would just as soon forget.