Review of American Civil War, The (3 Disc Box Set)

Introduction

The American Civil War, or The Civil War as it is known in the United States is an acclaimed documentary series covering the bloody war that saw 3,000,000 American men fight each other, with some 600,000 losing their lives in the four year battle that raged from 1861 to 1865.

Filmmaker Ken Burn`s series was widely applauded on release and won numerous awards including two Emmys a BAFTA and a Grammy.

The series is a definitive account of the war that contain some 16,000 archive photographs as well as paintings, lithographs, newspaper features, newsreel footage of veterans and features reading from a host of stars including Morgan Freeman, Jason Robards and Derek Jacobi.

Episode 1 runs for 1 hour and 39 minutes and looks at the causes of the war, each subsequent episode runs for 1 hour and 8 minutes and deals with the events chronologically finishing with episode 9 and the end of the conflict.

Video

The video is presented in 4:3 full-frame and is of average quality. Obviously the Civil War was fought long before camera crews were on battlefields alongside troops, so the story is told through endless pictures etc. Whilst providing comprehensive coverage, this ultimately relegates the disc to little more than a narrated textbook, and in truth if I wanted to know this much about the American Civil War, I think I would buy a book instead.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, which isn`t especially exciting but does a competent job of delivering the narration, reading and sound effects.

Features

There are no extras, but the menus are well laid out and are easy to navigate.

The disc is packaged in a cardboard outer slip case that contains a three disc fold out package detailing the contents of each disc and which also contains a 30 page guide to the episodes and a (lengthy) list of the awards won. I would have preferred slightly more robust outer packaging for £50 however.

Conclusion

The American Civil War won a great deal of awards in the United States for its comprehensive coverage of the conflict, and for Americans interested in their own history, the discs provide an undeniably useful resource. However, the narrated textbook style of presentation with endless photographs isn`t the most satisfactory of delivering the content in my opinion, with this method not delivering anything that can`t be learned from a good book.

Despite being an excellent historical record, ultimately actually watching it all is pretty tedious, and eleven hours spent with a reference book would be far more satisfactory.

The sound and video are both competent, but the £50 asking price is far too high, and I would suggest that £30 would be a much more sensible price point, and more inline with BBC documentary series for example.