Let's start out by reminding everybody that this TV series was aimed at an audience of children and young teenagers, so images of young Indy battering Nazis to the death with his bare fists wasn't part of the plan. It's totally different in tone from the films, which are intended to reprise old-time movie serials. The series is education-oriented, thus all the brushes with famous names of history. Production values ARE pretty good - it won 10 Emmys, out of 23 nominations! BUT...
Episodes were directed by Nicolas Roeg, Mike Newell, Terry Jones, and Carrie Fisher among others, but despite beautiful cinematography almost all the shows I've seen are pretty bland, and it's mostly the writers' fault. The series just lacks energy, and the characters, particularly Mrs Jones (Ruth de Soza) aren't very engaging - her star turn in "Florence, 1908" lacked any real passion to the point of being embarrassing. Margaret Tyzack, as Indy's governess, is by far the best actor and tends to outshine everybody else - she gets some real opportunities for character development, which is more than can be said for Lloyd Owen, who plays Professor Jones Sr.
Corey Carrier plays Indy age 10, while Sean Flanery plays the character ages 17-21. Flanery is very bland. I thought Carrier was OK for a precocious kid, but nothing special - though this may be the writers' fault. I LOATHE cutsey-pie stuff like the "Vienna, 1908" episode!!! (Note that a list of episodes can be found at Wikipedia.) 70 episodes were planned; but apparently only 44 were produced - I've only seen the episodes off the DVD volume one boxset, so... Maybe things got better... "Benares, 1910" was the only episode I thought was really GOOD - the series relatively slow pace works for the subject matter. "Princeton, 1916" tries to give us some thrills, but... the story just isn't interesting enough - "Mexico, 1916" works a LITTLE better - thanks partly to a two-fisted cameo by the future General Patton, and nice work by the supporting actors.
There's a noble effort here to work the historical characters - and their contributions - into the stories without being too preachy. So I'd say, if you want to give a kid with a taste for adventure a taste for early 20th century history, these are decent stories, BUT....
A HUGE irritation with the DVDs is that to pad out the series, a set of "documentaries" are included, which apart from being not what I paid to see, are highly historically suspect, at least the jingoistic Irish one, which is the only one I bothered to watch all the way through.
Episodes were directed by Nicolas Roeg, Mike Newell, Terry Jones, and Carrie Fisher among others, but despite beautiful cinematography almost all the shows I've seen are pretty bland, and it's mostly the writers' fault. The series just lacks energy, and the characters, particularly Mrs Jones (Ruth de Soza) aren't very engaging - her star turn in "Florence, 1908" lacked any real passion to the point of being embarrassing. Margaret Tyzack, as Indy's governess, is by far the best actor and tends to outshine everybody else - she gets some real opportunities for character development, which is more than can be said for Lloyd Owen, who plays Professor Jones Sr.
Corey Carrier plays Indy age 10, while Sean Flanery plays the character ages 17-21. Flanery is very bland. I thought Carrier was OK for a precocious kid, but nothing special - though this may be the writers' fault. I LOATHE cutsey-pie stuff like the "Vienna, 1908" episode!!! (Note that a list of episodes can be found at Wikipedia.) 70 episodes were planned; but apparently only 44 were produced - I've only seen the episodes off the DVD volume one boxset, so... Maybe things got better... "Benares, 1910" was the only episode I thought was really GOOD - the series relatively slow pace works for the subject matter. "Princeton, 1916" tries to give us some thrills, but... the story just isn't interesting enough - "Mexico, 1916" works a LITTLE better - thanks partly to a two-fisted cameo by the future General Patton, and nice work by the supporting actors.
There's a noble effort here to work the historical characters - and their contributions - into the stories without being too preachy. So I'd say, if you want to give a kid with a taste for adventure a taste for early 20th century history, these are decent stories, BUT....
A HUGE irritation with the DVDs is that to pad out the series, a set of "documentaries" are included, which apart from being not what I paid to see, are highly historically suspect, at least the jingoistic Irish one, which is the only one I bothered to watch all the way through.