leah-93299 I love all historical and period pieces so watch this one after my Downton Abbey fix. However, I am continually distracted during these episodes by the non authentic accents of characters who are supposed to be Virginians but sound more like they have dropped in from Georgia or Alabama. All southern accents are not created equal. Actors use coaches to learn proper English, Irish, German, Italian, etc. accents. Someone needed to teach these actors to speak Virginian. It is jarring to hear accents that are out of place with the setting. I could also do without all the graphic blood and gore but that seems to be part and parcel of all films these days.The series does hold one's attention. I must have not been paying strict attention because I do not remember the action ever dealing with the Union officer smuggled by Frank. When do they discover him?

FollyFX (I hope what I have written is not considered spoilers - I would not do that intentionally!)I understand a lot of the criticisms written in these reviews. My reaction to watching Episode 1 was "What is this? Desperate Housewives of Civil War Medicine??" - because it seemed so "overheated" and unbelievable. For example, when Nurse Phinney has to sleep on the floor of the ward among the soldiers' beds, I exclaimed, "That didn't happen! That would never have happened! But then I started to read the true story of Nurse Phinney, "Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars" and guess what - it DID happen plus a whole lot more! What I saw as "overheated" in terms of the drama between hospital personnel was actually DOWNPLAYED from the true reality!!! The surgeons and doctors did NOT want female nurses around and wanted to drive them OUT. The hospital WAS as chaotic, as shown. And as far as soldiers not being fed - YUP, it was only TOO TRUE!!! There was a shocking amount of graft and profiteering going on in the food supply chain! I highly recommend the true story of Nurse Phinney - it is quite a read!!

lamolitercs I watched the first episode as I'm always interested in a new costume drama, but I found this show to be really crippled by stock, predictable characters, so many of them just plain mean with no sense of reality about it. I decided to hold out through another episode, and while, again, the production values are good and there are some actors and actresses that I generally like, the script and the character development (or lack thereof) has made this unwatchable for me.The worst thing is that I keep reading such good reviews. What are people watching? If I wanted some Lifetime movie from two decades ago, this might be fine, but to tout this as the next Downton Abbey (where characters have nuances), is absurd!

lhagge-86907 Ridley Scott this may be, but a British costume drama it is not. By which I mean, though they appear to have tried for four years, they could not come up with a script that was not lame, or actors who were not amateurish. The very MINIMUM that should be expected is that actors will have a reasonable and consistent accent for their characters, but apparently even this was too much to ask--for example, each of the actors playing the family who own the hotel-turned hospital has a different accent, even though they are supposed to be playing a single Virginia family. The older girl, one of our heroines, cannot even maintain a consistent accent throughout,sometimes sounding vaguely southernish, and other times like a Yankee. Her younger sister by contrast sounds like a Georgia cracker. The results are like a low-budget film from the 1950s. Really really disappointing and cheesy. No finesse in the writing either--just clump clump clump like a big pair of boots. Ugh.