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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
The BBC's lavish, glowingly designed adaptation of Mervyn Peake's eccentrically brilliant novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast is a triumph of casting. Ian Richardson's Lear-like depiction of the mad earl of a remote, vast, ritual-obsessed building is matched by the brutal pragmatism of Celia Imrie as his wife, the synchronized madness of Zoë Wanamaker and Lynsey Baxter as his twin sisters, and the duplicitous charm of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Steerpike, the kitchen-boy determined to take over no matter how many deaths it costs. John Sessions is surprisingly touching as Prunesquallor, the family doctor who realizes almost too late what Steerpike intends.
It is always tricky to film a book dear to the hearts of its admirers. Wilson and his design team achieve a look rather more pre-Raphaelite than Peake's own illustrations--shabby velvets, garish sunlight, and dank, stone passages. The score by Richard Rodney Bennett is full of attractive surprises--fanfares and waltzes and apotheoses--and John Tavener's choral additions are plausibly parts of the immemorial ritual of Gormenghast. --Roz Kaveney
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Horrible travesty
Most of the plot of the book is scrambled and changed, the book's mood and atmosphere is completely destroyed, and dialogues, events, and many characters are almost completely antithetical to those in the book, etc. It's almost, but not actually worthy of being called, a study in garbaging and dumbing down something originally subtle and profound into triviality and cartoon/comic book dimensions. Important aspects of many character's attitudes are changed or completely reversed, dialogues exactly ... Read More
Rating:  - !
a really beautiful, faithful adaptation of the books. the characters and set are rightfully surreal, grotesque, and comical, and the series definitely captures the decaying quality of gormenghast. i only wish it could have gone on longer, and would have loved to have seen them continue with titus alone.
Rating: - Fantasy Genre Revived
I ordered "Gormenghast" on the basis of the favorable reviews offered by other Amazonian viewers. Having only "perused" the Peake novels, I came into the Groan's world as a newbie, with no real expectations of liking, loving, or disliking the mini-series.
I was pleasantly surprised with the vigor and boldness of the direction. The wide camera angles, the purposely muted colors of all of the characters' clothing, all added to the trippy-dippy feel that is the daily life of Gormenghast. ... Read More
Rating: - Gormenghast, a great mini-series from great novels
The Groans have ruled over the earldom of Gormenghast for seventy-six generations. Just as the future seventy-seventh Earl, Titus, is being born, rebellion rears its head in Castle Gormenghast, within whose walls dwell a collection of madmen and grotesques.
This BBC mini-series retells Mervyn Peake's epic fantasy novels, Titus Groan and Gormenghast, in a very faithful treatment. This one is a must-see for those who have read the novels, and for those that haven't, it presents a wonderful ... Read More
Rating: - Great followup to the book
If you have read the book and enjoyed it, as I have, then this is a very good video. I'm not sure how it would be received by someone who had not read the book first.
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