canuckteach This is a fabulous mini-series - a docudrama - about the South Pole expeditions of Norwegian R Amundsen and the British Robert Falcon Scott. The acting and photography are superb, an excellent period piece (although the quality of the DVD itself is a bit grainy).Unless you've slept under a rock for 100 years, or never read a history book, you know that Amundsen reached the Pole first, and successfully returned, whereas Scott and 4 of his men perished miserably on the return trip. Why? It's all about project management. This DVD is all about properly managing a complicated project dealing with the wilds of nature. Amundsen has 'it' - Scott doesn't.The Norwegians are highly-skilled at traveling in frozen wastelands. They are in fine physical condition, they know how to ski and handle dog-teams. Amundsen recruits a small team of specialists. He doesn't get too high or low about anything, nor does he get too close to the team--he remains aloof. He makes meticulous preparations.The British are operated like a Navy Ship under military command: Scott gives orders and doesn't want them questioned. He has a group of favorites, but takes a colossal team of guys, mostly military, but some civilians, who find Scott pompous, arrogant and misguided. He breaks promises and plays the men against each other, while they hope to be in the final group to make the final trek. He sends the wrong guy to purchase Siberian ponies, to save a few bucks, plus he fails to include a couple of key players, including a properly-trained team to tend to the motor sledges. Since there wasn't a Walmart Auto (or Canadian Tire) in the Antarctic, you might wonder what he was thinking. But his biggest problem is the notion of man-hauling the enormous loads all the way to the Pole. you see: no one walks when they can ride. and the Eskimos always rode dog-teams. Scott had experienced some difficulties with dogs in the past, but that's no excuse.I might direct your attention to a couple of fabulous scenes featuring Bill Nighy, who plays Meares, one of the dog-team drivers. Meares says he'd rather swim back to New Zealand than spend another season under Scott's command. He later tells Scott, in so many words, that he finds it highly unlikely that Scott will live to criticize Meares' choices. Nighy is terrific.In case you missed it, this screenplay is based on a historical non-fiction piece created after it was discovered that many unflattering portions of Scott's diary were excised from the publication released to the public. There has been quite the resistance from many quarters to a revised viewpoint of a man considered to be a great British hero. Apparently, some recent discovery that the weather was particularly cold when Scott tried to return from the Pole is cited as startling scientific evidence that this presentation of Scott as a peevish incompetent should be set aside. well, whose decision was it to try walking there and back anyway? As Meares says (in this dramatization): 'any man who sits in the Antarctic and whines about the weather is unfit to lead'.I'll close with a quote, not from this film, but from the 1948 'Scott of the Antarctic' with John Mills. The Scott character (Mills) tells Nansen (the elder statesman of Arctic exploration) that he is going to the South Pole with motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. Nansen replies that Scott should take dogs, dogs and more dogs.Amundsen did - Scott didn't. Case closed.Enjoy this excellent re-creation of events. It's insightful.

Enoch Sneed The first thing to say is that this is an incredibly well-mounted series. The production design and recreation of the equipment used by Scott and Amundsen is as good as that in Ealing's "Scott of the Antarctic".Based on Huntford's infamous 'revisionist' view of one our national heroes, the series doesn't leave Amundsen immune from criticism. He raises money for a North Pole expedition from his country's government under false pretences (using the reputation of polar pioneer Nansen), intending to head South the whole time. He makes a near-disastrous early start for the pole, runs for home riding on a sledge and leaves his men to shift for themselves (this is a criticism levelled at Scott by Captain Oates). Johanssen and Prestrud only made it back by the skin of their teeth. When Johanssen had the nerve to criticise Amundsen's actions he was dropped from the polar party (he committed suicide when the expedition returned to Norway). Maybe Scott and Amundsen were alike in some ways?There can be no doubt, however, that Amundsen planned his journey to the pole with admirable simplicity and efficiency. He truly deserved his success.The treatment of Scott is less even-handed. From the start he is shown as a mediocre Navy-man ("no future in battleships") and a hen-pecked husband driven by his wife's ambition for a hero-husband (thankfully the series doesn't repeat Huntford's unfounded speculation about Kathleen Scott's affair with Nansen).The real difficulties start with the final party's journey on the last stage to the pole and back. The only complete documentary evidence is Scott's journal - probably written as a literary work rather than a 'log'. Therefore, when Scott writes that "PO Evans is nearly broken down in brain and becoming impossible" what does this mean? That he was having some kind of nervous breakdown (Oates said he "lost his guts" and was behaving "like an old woman or worse"), or becoming an encumbrance who was not contributing to the team, or what? The series follows Huntford's assertion that "he gave vent to his feelings in babbling speech". There is no evidence for this. There is no evidence that it was Oates who kept up Evans's morale (the quotes above suggest Oates in fact had little sympathy with Evans). Much of this section of the series is based on what Huntford feels "must have" happened (the two most dangerous words in historical writing). As for Scott bursting into tears at the Pole (we don't even get to hear "Great God! This is an awful place!") or Bowers saying: "God save the King" with his dying breath, words fail me.Oates's suicide is written down as the last act of a desperate man. Probably, but the manner in which it was done was the act of "an English gentleman" of the type Oates was (I personally believe in the "I may be some time" version). The series shows the physical deterioration of Scott's party very graphically after five months of hard physical work on a poor diet.My other criticisms are that secondary characters are not well-drawn and therefore less involving (Bowers and Wilson especially). The music is generally good except where it breaks into a 1980's disco-beat for Amundsen's ascent of the Axel Heiberg glacierSo: - a very well-made production, very gripping, but too one-sided and speculative to be thought of as the "true story" of Scott's Last Expedition. Only five men can tell the truth about that.

widescreenguy and teamwork and always politics.Scott is the typical stiff upper lip brit, soldiering on in the face of adversity. The problem is the adversity comes out of the British sense of entitlement and superiority. Time and again they refuse to face the fact they don't run everything and circumstance and chance is just going to tremble in the presence of royalty wot. hip hip fap.So Amundson has to pull a fast one to get to the Antarctic, and his approach is to make hard decisions and difficult choices, like knowing full well ahead of time the sled dogs at some point are going to be a source of food for them and the remaining dogs.When Scott feeds the exhausted horses (which shouldn't have been there in the first place) to the men and dogs, it's viewed in far more politically correct and image palatable manner. jolly good, well on with it then. the reason the courage and determination was necessary from the British expedition is because Scott refused to accept experience based input from his subordinates. before and during the expedition.When things go wrong, he chalks it up to bad luck or the weather or the failure of others. Amundson doesn't even have to do that because his decisions avoided the impossible situations in the first place.watch the dramatization and decide for yourself.

Jake Tidmore Let me start out by agreeing with everyone who has previously written: it is the best drama about polar adventure ever made. The viewer should be very skeptical about the Scott defenders because it is evident their homework is shallowly researched and based on a very limited interpretation of Scott's polar problem: that bad luck and bad weather caused his downfall. I've read Huntford's book 3 times, read the weather article and seen the PBS episode where the young scientist tried to resurrect Scott as a noble, if unfortunate hero. Also, Huntford and his fellow professionals have posted excellent rebuttals regarding these spurious claims about Scott and the weather. The questions that should put an end to the argument is this: who would get you through safely and who exhibited a breadth of polar knowledge sufficient to AVOID the problems of travel in the brutal Antarctic? If you said Scott, then you probably thought the Charge of the Light Brigade was a wonderful jaunt through Russian cannon fire just to show how noble and brave you were. Above all else, don't let these half-informed reviewers go without a serious look into the counter-points made to their weak arguments. Still, the series is a breath-taking look at the human struggle to survive and to seek glory and the dreadful price it takes in lives and in the judgment of history.