Review for The Further Adventures of the Musketeers

After the roaring success of ‘The Three Musketeers’ in 1966, starring a very young Jeremy Brett, Brian Blessed, and Jeremy Young, came this series a year later; ‘The Further Adventures of the Musketeers’. Whilst I cannot quite remember either clearly on original airing in the much vaunted classic serial slot, early Sunday evening, I certainly remember spending a lot of time swishing a plastic sword about, with one arm tucked behind me, shouting ‘en garde’ – surely the result of exposure to this series as a six-year old. (Although, to be fair, that probably had more to do with the Hannah Barbera cartoon version, a part of ‘The Banana Splits’ show).


It’s fantastic that companies like Simply Media are prepared to licence this archive material and put it out there after so many years left collecting dust in the BBC library. I’m happy to say that in this instance, it really was well worth the effort.


Despite being a bit creaky by today’s standards, this video-taped series has it all – action, humour, intrigue and, well, more action. Indeed, it almost typifies the heyday of this type of serial on the BBC – an excellent example of what could be achieved with limited resources, immovable studio bound video cameras but with a great script, a top-notch cast and some tight direction. (This was directed by BBC drama stalwart Christopher Barry (Dr Who, Z Cars) and Hugh David (Dr Who), so people used to working with fixed studio sets).


So despite just a year having passed since the first series, rather than merely take the populist approach which would happen today of bringing out a second series loosely based on Dumas’s tales, the BBC remained faithful to the original works and picked up on Dumas own book which featured a return of the trio twenty years on. Much has changed, though the men are all eager for some fresh excitement in their hum-drum routine lives. The series is renowned for sticking faithfully to the novel – although, having never read it, I can’t vouch for that.


17th Century France is in turmoil with the royalists on one dies and the rebellion on the other. We learn from d’Artagnan (Joss Ackland) that the other members of the Musketeers, Athos (Jeremy Young) has retired, Aramis (John Woodvine) is now a priest and Porthos (Brian Blessed) as got married and settled into a comfortable, if unadventurous, life. The boy King Louis XIV is officially on his throne with his mother Anne constantly fearing for his life. In the meantime, Cardinal Mazarin is plotting and scheming whilst pulling all the royal strings.


d’Artagnan himself is the only one left in the army and is responsible for the transportation of the now arrested President Broussel, Mazarin’s arch enemy. As he’s transporting him to jail and angry mob cause enough distraction for Rochefort, an old enemy of d’Artagnan’s, to free Brousell, who in turn will plot to free the Prince de Beaufort from his castle prison. There’s only one thing to do. It’s time for d’Artagnan to call up the Musketeers!


The cast is pretty much the same as ‘The Three Musketeers’ from a year earlier, though the excellent Joss Ackland replaced the equally excellent Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan. Michael Gothard is fantastically sinister as Mordaunt too – adding to the feeling that this really was the BBC’s halcyon years for historic drama.


Despite the necessarily choreographed action (these were pretty much directed like plays and recorded ‘live’ to tape to a very large degree) the enthusiastic performances of Joss Ackland and Brian Blessed serve to bring this above the norm. It’s a hopelessly complex story for a family audience, and yet we devoured such things back in the day regardless of that. As a result, it’s richly entertaining today.

Image quality is fine for video-taped recordings of this vintage with very few signs of drop-out, although by today’s standards it clearly lacks definition.


It’s a little disappointing that there are no contextual extras – a Brian Blessed interview would have been fun – but beggars can’t be choosers, and I remain grateful that the set has been issued at all.

Top stuff and highly recommended to lovers of archive British TV from this era.