The Jewel in the Crown (1984)

Thanks for the memories!

i must have seen a different film!!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Not knowing anything about the book, I was expecting this celebrated PBS series to be somewhat like a longer variation of the excellent David Lean movie Passage to India. But I was disappointed by Jewel in the Crown. While it did give me valuable glimpses into the British Raj, the class tensions between the British and the Indians (and between the British themselves), and the history of the period, the overall effect on me when the series ended was depression.And I did not enjoy the portrayals of rape, brutality, torture, insanity, homosexuality, etc. I regret having watched this series. If you would be offended by such content, then I also caution you about this film. PBS has been going downhill in recent years, in my opinion, as far as portraying more and more offensive content. After watching Jewel in the Crown, I now realize the decline had began much earlier - at least as early as 1984, when this series was broadcast.

This miniseries is compelling, well-told, beautifully filmed, and superbly acted. With a powerfully moving script, it tells the story of the complex relationship between the British and Indian people at the end of British rule of the subcontinent. It has history, romance, action, mystery, and even a mild dose of sex and violence. ;-) It definitely has something for everyone.I cried, laughed, was amazed, and said "Oh my God!" and "I knew it!" several times. I was glued to the screen and later watched my favorite scenes a second or third time.Absolutely its only shortcoming was that there were no subtitles. Being as old as it is and with the many accents, it's sometimes a bit hard to make out the exact lines. But it's so easy to follow (yet never dull) that I was never lost. If A&E ever re-releases this with enhanced sound and subtitles, I'll snag it up in a New York minute! Even my husband (who normally hates British films) really enjoyed this. He hated to miss a minute; by Chapter 3, he was utterly hooked.See this wonderful piece of work if you can. It's well worth every hour.

The haunting story of Paul Scott's THE RAJ QUARTET brought to the screen with flawless acting and character interpretation. While the story is not a pleasant one, the screenplay captures the scope of the problems created by nearly 300 years of British presence in India. Peggy Ashcroft, Fabia Drake, Judy Parfitt, Art Malik and above all Tim Pigott-Smith, to mention but a very few of the cast, create memorable characters that come alive on the screen and will live on in your memories. Superb...

Arguably the best television series ever made, it captures perfectly the spirit of the novel and the time in which it takes place, a time in which the British were slowly losing India without properly realizing it till it was too late. The photography is breathtaking and the performances are outstanding by everyone. Dame Peggy Ashcroft as the haunted "servant" who has been accepted as a companion by Fabia Drake but who is later asked to leave when her protector dies and also by Geraldine James who slowly sees her world crumble before her eyes, unable to do anything about it, but finding at least SOME kind of solace in Tim Piggot-Smith's arms. Especially the first episode with the tender love scene between Susan Wooldridge and Art Malik (both utterly fantastic) is superb and not until much much later does the horrid truth about what happened that night occur to us. In short: a pure joy, which keeps you riveted to the screen from start to end. I have watched the entire series twice and will surely watch it again and again, if only to marvel at the performances and the craftsmanship of the production.