The Musketeers: Season 1

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Marvelous entertainment on every level. We’re in a new golden age of television now, especially for fans of sci-fi, fantasy, and historical drama. And this show with its great production values and seductive cast, is outstanding for the more playful and fun approach it takes to historical romance. It’s light, fast paced, and beautifully done. Of course the older Musketeers movies always delivered comedy as well as action, but this version is just serious enough and intelligent enough to make the wit and humor all the more appealing. The violence and inevitable cruelty of the period is never overdone, and moments of triumph often depend not on brutality but on cleverness. The villains or antagonists — Milady de Winter and Cardinal Richelieu — are quite complex and truly interesting characters, and that adds considerable depth to the whole offering. I am delighted that a second season is in the works. — For some one who grew up in the forties and fifties as I did, reveling in Errol Flynn movies like “Captain Blood,” “Robin Hood,” or “The Sea Hawk,” this is a great treat. It’s entirely safe for an audience that might find the gore of “Game of Thrones” too much, and the sadism of “The Borgias” simply overwhelming. “The Musketeers” is not striving to be as serious as those and other shows, yet at the same time the sets, costumes, and the cinematography are superb, the writing is consistently excellent, and the use of historical figures is extremely well done. Every episode is profoundly emotionally satisfying. Highly recommended.

– Anne Rice

The Musketeers is loosely based on Alexandre Dumas’ novel “The Three Musketeers” which is set from 1625-1628 (the caption 1630 at the start of the first episode is a typo — I checked the dates against the novel). Unlike most Musketeers films which follow the book closely and center on the fictional affair between the Duke of Buckingham and Queen Anne of Austria (1625), this BBC series takes the characters and sets them onto entirely unique adventures of their own.

These ten adventures are a lot of fun to watch and feature some of the best costumes I’ve ever seen any of these performers wear, especially the black leather often worn by Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu. Richelieu, played by the incomparable Peter Capaldi (who was unable to return for series 2 because he was chosen to succeed Matt Smith as The Doctor in Doctor Who that same year) is by far the best part of this series.

Sticking to the villain of the Dumas original, this cardinal is cold, calculating, and apparently without conscience when it comes to accomplishing what he perceives to be the will of King Louis XIII to whom he holds absolute loyalty. It is as delicious to watch as it is anti-historical to the real man. In other words, a great adventure story you won’t be able to take your eyes off.

– Historian Laurel A. Rockefeller

Though not typically a fan of programs or movies shot in an overall “dark and dank” format, but for this show it fits just fine. The director(s) is/are trying to recreate that dark nuance prevalent in this period of time (17th Century France). The actors (all new faces) and their acting is great as their on-screen chemistry is undeniable! You cannot buy or construct chemistry….this show has it in spades.
That said, the stories are a little too compressed, too neat and clean but quite enjoyable nonetheless. I would love to see a more BBC or PBS-esque technique of 1:30+ run-time to allow deeper story lines. Each actor is given the lead each week and the others support…it is a nice round-robin cast. Overall very enjoyable and I look forward to each episode. For those not familiar or less familiar with this period of time in history, it is a good way to see how the politics, the church and the stark separation of the (have’s and the have not’s) was and in many cases, still is.

-Douglas Merrill

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Luke Pasqualino, Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Peter Capaldi
Directors: Farren Blackburn, Richard Clark, Andy Hay, Toby Haynes, Saul Metzstein
Writers: Adrian Hodges, Susie Conklin, James Dormer, Alexandre Dumas pere, Ben Harris
Producers: Colin Wratten, Adrian Hodges, Carmel Malony, Stephen McDonogh, Jessica Pope
Format: Multiple Formats, NTSC, Subtitled
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Number of discs: 3
Rated: NR – Not Rated
Studio: BBC Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: August 26, 2014
Run Time: 600 minutes
ASIN: B00IT3KQB8