Children Of Dune [DVD]

Firstly the casting is a mixed bag but generally an improvement on the first miniseries. William Hurt and Uwe Ochsenknecht failed to impress me in the first series as Duke Leto and Stilgar respectively. Duke Leto is not a character in the second series and Steven Berkoff brings much needed fire to the character of Stilgar. Edward Atterton takes over as Duncan Idaho and is adequate in the role. The greatest loss is Saskia Reeves who played Lady Jessica so flawlessly in the first series. Alice Krige gives a good performance here as Jessica but doesn't resemble the character's physical description in the book as well as her predeccessor. The only real disappointment is Susan Sarrandon who comes across as rather wooden and cliched. Fortunately her character only appears in a limited number of scenes.

The greatest additions to the cast however have to be James McAvoy and Jessica Brooks who play the prescient twins Leto and Ghanima. They are both fantastic and do a wonderful job in portraying these hugely complex characters as well as the strange bond between them. I hope to see more of them soon.

As in the first series, the special effects and CGI are servicable although not outstanding. The one improvement that has been made is the desert scenes. In the first series, it was often painfully obvious that actors were walking along a narrow strip of sand with bizarre blue lighting. Here careful use of bluescreening manages to give us a hint of the great desert panoramas described in the books.

The one failure of the second series is the amount they try and cram in. Races are mentioned and dropped, we suddenly find out that ghola creating technology can bring people back from the dead and people hurry to places with no real explanation why. Having read the books it was easy to fill in the blanks but I think viewers without this advantage might have been left a little confused by the actions of certain characters.

Alice Krige (aka Borg Queen) is amazing as lady Jessica and the general acting is first class. The imagery and special effects of this mini series are truely staggering for TV and the haunting soundtrack is most probably the best I have ever heard; and easily rivals the best of most big-budget films. It sets the mood of the drama perfectly.

The mini-series adapts the 2nd amd 3rd Dune series novels faithfully so I would recommend you see the first mini series or at least have read the books.

I cannot over emphasise the slick ingenuity gone in the production of this epic mini series. This is what epic sci-fi should be and every self respecting sci-fi fan (or anyone else for that matter) should see this masterpiece.

Surely this should win am emmy or two...

The story follows on from Herbert's stunning 'Dune' and the series has cleverly wrapped the two subsequent novels; 'Dune Messiah' and 'The Children of Dune' into one series. We left Dune with Paul Atreides having overthrown the Emperor of the Known Universe and becoming Emperor himself. Here we have sped forward a number of years, Paul rules the Empire and a jihad of the Fremen (the native inhabitants of Dune, repressed by the former regime) has spread his name across the cosmos. The story follows the repercussions of the jihad as well as the events surrounding the birth of his two children.

There are some great performances here, Alex Newman may not be the best Paul Atreides, but he works well enough, Alice Kirge as his mother plays well, as does the actors who play Irulan, Chani, Leto and his sister. Some dodgy performances from Gurney Haleck and Stilgar but all in all a good cast. The change of some of the actors from the first series is a little confusing but in general has worked to the benefit of the series.

Wonderful sets, a beautiful score, and effects while not of cinema calibre are a cut above the usual television variety make for a good series.

Watching this, I can't help but feel that if this had been released in the cinema, on a Hollywood budget, it would have done very well indeed and more than made up for Lynch's high concept, but hard to follow film adaptation.

Oh well - if wishes were horses.

I can't give this five stars mainly because despite all its good qualities, the sometimes bad acting and bad effects do affect your viewing. That said, this is in no way the fault of the production or script, but simply budget and acting problems.