I've got a substantial interest in history and this... Well, this just bored the pants off of me. I could only make it through about three full episodes before I had to abandon this series as a lost cause.
I'm not a fan of one-star reviews, but it's very hard for me to find something positive to say about this series. I suppose some of the actors deliver interesting performances. I did enjoy Patrick Stewart's turn as Lenin, although it takes five or six episodes for him to turn up. There's only so much actors can do with poor material, however, and the writing on this series is some of the worst I've seen. "Fall of Eagles" skips over interesting bits of history to focus on nobles whining about their lives, and it does this with depressing regularity.
Events of serious dramatic interest are often elided with 30 seconds of voice-over narration, to allow the story to get back to bickering royals. One assumes this is done for budgetary reasons and to emphasize character development, except that most of the characters never rise to the level of being interesting, and there's no reason most of the development on offer couldn't have been executed by putting the characters in situations of some historical import rather than Drawing Rooms 3 through 5.
All in all, I strongly recommend that this series be avoided. If you're interested in historical dramas, you'd be better off looking at "I Claudius", which manages to correct most of the faults of "Fall of Eagles" and turn out a genuinely interesting tale. Or if you're looking for something more contemporary, Michael Kitchen's turn as the World War II era DCS Christopher Foyle is at least as good as his turn as Leon Trotsky here.
I'm not a fan of one-star reviews, but it's very hard for me to find something positive to say about this series. I suppose some of the actors deliver interesting performances. I did enjoy Patrick Stewart's turn as Lenin, although it takes five or six episodes for him to turn up. There's only so much actors can do with poor material, however, and the writing on this series is some of the worst I've seen. "Fall of Eagles" skips over interesting bits of history to focus on nobles whining about their lives, and it does this with depressing regularity.
Events of serious dramatic interest are often elided with 30 seconds of voice-over narration, to allow the story to get back to bickering royals. One assumes this is done for budgetary reasons and to emphasize character development, except that most of the characters never rise to the level of being interesting, and there's no reason most of the development on offer couldn't have been executed by putting the characters in situations of some historical import rather than Drawing Rooms 3 through 5.
All in all, I strongly recommend that this series be avoided. If you're interested in historical dramas, you'd be better off looking at "I Claudius", which manages to correct most of the faults of "Fall of Eagles" and turn out a genuinely interesting tale. Or if you're looking for something more contemporary, Michael Kitchen's turn as the World War II era DCS Christopher Foyle is at least as good as his turn as Leon Trotsky here.