Such a frustrating disappointment

Really Surprised!

Memorable, crazy movie

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I really liked it but it seems unfinished; I had to ask my husband if it was over or there was another part? when it ended they were looking for the the mother and her son in a field or someplace; and we had to do research to find out if there really was a conspiracy to replace Charles (II?) with James.

When it comes to bringing historical events to the screen there are a couple of options, one is to make it a total documentary, this is not what you are going to get with this series, you are going to gets some good actors that could have had a little better direction portray what happened during the great fire of London in 1666 and some of the events that happened during the 4 days that the fire burned uncontrolled though the streets of the city and what happened to some of the people that were close to the fire. It attempts to put some faces to the story and help the viewer understand the events of the time that lead up to other tragedies that were occurring at the same time. The struggle for the religious hearts of the people and the fear of foreigners, the depths that some people had to go to just to survive and the lack of caring that some people had for their neighbors and then how in some of the bleakest circumstances the people you least expect end up helping someone else just out of kindness. Is it all true and accurate? Probably not, however it is a decent way to spend 3 hours.

Another viewer compared this would-be miniseries exploring the 1666 Great Fire of London to EASTENDERS and I think they were spot on: this is extraordinarily disappointing given the effort and level of talent involved, and says a lot about the current state of the ITV drama department.The miniseries is about the fire but the fire hardly comes into it. Instead we gets lots of uninteresting soap opera shenanigans involving sex, politics and conspiracy. The characterisation is on the level of a provincial pantomime and never once did I believe in or care about any of the sub-plots.In a bid for quality, a lot of familiar actors from the best TV series around today are brought in. We get Rose Leslie and Charles Dance from A GAME OF THRONES and Jack Huston from BOARDWALK EMPIRE, but none of them are at their best. And they're sidelined in favour of Daniel Mays, who's out of his league playing Pepys (who seems to be a bit of a twit) and the singularly wooden Andrew Buchan. No, THE GREAT FIRE is a chore to sit through and there's nothing here I can recommend to any viewer.

This is drama by numbers.A great idea for a script but unfortunately the writing, the directing and most of the acting fails to deliver. There is one character in particular (Hannah)that had I been there I would have thrown her ON To the fire. Constantly whining and nagging and the poor actress was so miscast as a 13 year-old - maybe her agent misheard and thought it was for a 30 year old!The cast contains some quality actors particularly Daniel Mays and Charles Dance but they are directed so badly that at one point I really thought Dance was going to twirl his moustache and utter "Mou-ha-hah". Mays also fails to deliver anything much more than a caricature of Pepys and in the first episode the whinging boatman (read cab driver for modern day equivalent) is so clichéd that I thought he was going to say "You know 'oo I 'ad in the back of my boat the other day?"Indeed the only actor who showed any depth was Rose Leslie as the sister-in-law but think in future years she may be embarrassed to have this one on her CV.ITV dramas have shown a massive improvement in quality in recent years but sadly this does not fall into that category and is more typical of their output that graced our screens in the late 1990s and early noughties. It is more suited to soap opera than serious drama and is an opportunity missed.