User reviews

Tech billionaire Hiram Otis moves his family from The States to Canterville Chase, an English Mansion, with an unexpected extra, a ghost, in the form of Simon de Canterville.

First off, in this day and age, why do we still have to suffer Brits playing Americans with abysmal accents, and vice versa, now I'm a big fan of Caroline Catz and James Lance, but those accents are excruciating, and sadly put me off straight away.

The first three episodes are all very poor, to say that too many liberties were taken is a huge understatement. Only in episode four is there anything worth seeing. The special effects genuinely look as though they've come from 1986.

What so unforgivable, is the pacing, it's supposed to be a ghost story, but it's just so slow and boring.

The standout, by a mile is Haydn Gwynne, she manages to make something out of the character, and makes the wicked Grandmother pretty interesting, sadly she's trying to swim upstream.

The adaptation with David Niven is superior in every possible way, please watch that, then compare it to this, for the most part this was very poor.

5/10.

It was commissioned by BYU from the BBC. So its rating is for kids of all ages. If your'e a fan of British Television there are many familiar faces in this 4 episode miniseries. The Executive Producer & Writer also worked on 2 of my favorite British cozy mysteries: Father Brown and Shakespeare & Hathaway. Once I got past the fake American accents of James Lance & Carolyn Catz who play the parents, I enjoyed how the mystery unfolded. I liked seeing the gothic mansion & british countryside etc. It was filmed in UK. Available on the BYU Tv. Im watching their free app on my Roku device and there have been no ads.

Ignore the off-putting opening minutes of this, where Caroline Catz and James Lance try to speak with American accents. This is a well made and enjoyable family entertainment with some fine performances from the rather large cast. (I thought Laurel Waghorn was particularly good as Virginia Otis.)

I don't know how much this deviates from the original story by Oscar Wilde, but I thought this version was well written and quite affecting as Sir Simon's backstory is revealed.

As a Briton, I didn't care much for some of the UK versus US stuff, but I guess this had to have an element of locals versus immigrants and railing against the strange ways of foreigners.

This story has been told and retold in film many times. This remake is a fun rendition with great location shots and beautiful camera work! Worth the time!

A Britain the British won't recognise and one sold to the population of the United States that even they are unlikely to believe.

I've always liked the story and always find time to watch any version of it when it is presented, even though they are usually only loosely based on the original. This time they have gone too far, by embellishing the story so much it barely resembles it at all.

Add to that the ridiculous notion that a small village and its occupants is somehow in need of being saved from its stiff-upper-lipped and stuffy self by the American dream is utterly infuriating.

So-so acting, dragged down further by the terrible accents and then crushed further into the dirt by a contemptible story alteration make for an excruciating watching experience.

Save yourselves!

Watched this over Christmas with my wife and we thoroughly enjoyed it. The cast were uniformly good,(..tho the twin boys were a little stilted,at times,not a dealbreaker,though...). Always had a soft spot for James Lance since he helped Alan Partridge tune in to 'Bangkok Chick Boys' in his Travelodge Room and he was good in this with a passable American accent,(..ditto,his screen wife..). Haydn Gwynn essentially played the same part she played in the riotous,irreverent 'The Windsors'....absolutely nothing wrong with that,might I add but for us the star of this production was Tony Head as the Ghost,making us smile whenever he was on screen. It was just good old-fashioned Family entertainment and we loved it.

I followed James Lance here bc he was so terrific as Trent Crimm and this seemed like an oddly similar premise, only with Lasso, they hired Americans for American roles and Brits for British roles - and with this show, no such effort was made - and it shows. The script must have been written by a child and the third grader's friends are the producers, but the idea is cute and it's sweet that they're going for Americans inspire Brits Part II. Still, sadly, even the wonderful Anthony Head is AWFUL here. The only value in this show is unintentional humor, but....a laugh's a laugh. Unless this was produced for a British Nickolodeon type of channel for elementary school viewers, this one's a pass.

The title of this review is a line from the series uttered by Jeff rawle's character, 'Bluey', the Duke of Stilton.

It pretty much sums up this series, as it was, in fact, tripe.

It's a shame, really, as we were looking forward to this, but suffered through about 25 minutes of this garbage before switching off.

Aside from the appalling American accents, the main protagonists were painfully bad and the whole thing played to the US myth that all Brits live in stately homes (or Romany Gypsy caravans?!). Some of the better-known cast members (Hadyn Gwynne, Jeff Rawle, Anthony Head & Jonty Stephens) should have known better and avoided this travesty. And it's for them that I gave it three stars. All of the cast below 30 need acting lessons.

I thought this mini series was a great family series. There isn't a bunch of violence or sex and it is family entertainment. I miss really great series' like this . I hope they make more.

Review Canterville ghost 2022 A 2 episode version of Oscar Wildes novel starring Anthony Stewart Head, Giles from Buffy, as the titular ghost.

Ok. As a kidfriendly adventure it might be ok. But i HAVE to compare it to the source material. And it sucks! There only one redeeming thing and thats head as the ghost. But concidering the material it doesnt help.

Its ofcourse set in contemporay times because... They weaved in the twins looking for treasure with two redhaired gipsy twingirls, a drama about the Otises going bankrupt, a rivaling thing btween the otises and the canterville family and a... horseriding adventure?

Gone are the eerie quality of wildes novel, yes it was fun at times but also dramatic and ghostly. Gone are the ghastly desguises the ghosts use traded for wonky CGI , They even give Sir Simon a talking familiar in the form of a rat!

The trip into the 4th dimension wich we never see in the novel, when Vorginia is redeeming the ghost is tirned into a bloody courtroom drama!

Fair to say i HATE this version and will give it a 1/5 because it is well acted but utter trash! Wilde should haunt the team behind this travesty!

Right from the start you know they didn't have much money to spend on this production.

There is a 'horse riding' scene that looks like something from a 1930s comedy.

The father is wearing a wig straight out of the dressing up box, yet the show won an Emmy for outstanding makeup and hairstyling!

The mother has an 'American' accent that changes often, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. I expect more from Caroline Katz even if the budget didn't include money for a voice coach. We will never be able to mock Dick van Dyke's 'cockney' accent again!

BYUtv part funded this so it will have been shown in America, I assume it was re-dubbed.

On the plus side Lizzy Connelly has fun playing 'Moppy' Stilton, her description of her 'charity' work in Africa is hilarious and maybe rather too close to the truth.

Overall it passed the time and the whole family can watch it but it should have been much better.

I gave this a shot, I really did. Besides the cringefest at the beginning I actually forced my self to watch it since I loved the book and previous older movies.

Honestly though... I have seen better acting and CGI in my toilet with puppets made out of toilet paper.

Ridiculous plot changes, acting that needs to be showed as "things to avoid" in acting lessons, CGI thats worse than SyFi movies.

Such a disappointment.

Firstly it's hilarious the featured review mocks the father's terrible wig. Which is in fact the actor's real hair... That said the American accents are indeed terrible, the twins acting is insufferable, the CGI and greenscreen has been done as cheaply as possible and it shows. There's even a talking rat for goodness sakes! It's entirely populated with clichés - cod Shakespearean dialogue, upper class twits, optimistic can do Yanks, picturesque Romany caravans and castles... Unless you're watching with kids I'd definitely skip this bad adaptation.

In the UK this was shown as 2 feature length episodes which made it drag somewhat. I imagine 4 bitesize episodes made it more palatable for the US market.

Nice entertaining miniseries (4 episodes). Enjoyable storyline. Certainly no blockbuster theater but good for a few hours a couple evenings this week. Enjoyed the castle and country side tour (I'd visit that). Never heard of byu tv and had to watch on my iPad but found it worthwhile. The courtroom scene was tedious for me and the kids acting was a bit over the top but the young lady and her parents were good. I could see this as a series delving into the fathers experiments more and the kids finding more adventures in and around the castle as well as newly married sister hosting horse riding parties with new hubby and snobby grandma. Potential here.

An absolutely awful adaptation. We lasted around 30 minutes of episode one but the thought of four two hour episodes of this drivel had us reaching for the TV remote. Hadyn Gwynne, Caroline Catz and Anthony Head are fine actors each with an impressive back catalogue to be proud of but they are completely wasted in this awful production. The special effects are good but characterisations are stereotypical, in particular the Gypsy family. The superb locations are also wasted and can do nothing to save what is a poor poor story. In short if you are thinking of watching this production don't. It would be several hours of your life you won't get back!

Another endless stream of movies with a talking rat and Brits playing Americans very very badly??

Brits and Americans should NEVER EVER try to play act each other. They just can't and never has been able to get one another right in anything - not the accent, not the culture, not the mannerisms! So, just NEVER!!

And no more talking rodents either!!

Add to that a bad script and bad acting??

How awful!

I've watched all of the Canterville movies. I love the book. This is the most engaging rendition of the movie. One that brings the 21st century to this fine old story. Oscar Wilde wrote in 1887 but this movie gives a renewed and not satirical rendering of this story. The English countryside filming far beats any theater attempts for this to be a play and brings that realism to see modern castles still do exist today. This performance should be pushed for more coverage since I stumbled over this movie while searching for I don't even remember. The castle front gave me the idea to watch it and am glad I did.

I think this should be the best of them all and I loved Patrick Stewart but this movie is fuller with a deeper history given.

An entertaining tale, adapted from Oscar Wilde. What a pity that the writers think that all old English verbs end in 'st'. The ghost says 'I canst', etc. ('st' is 2nd person singular, not 1st person singular.) I would have expected Antony Head to know better. The aristocratic young viscount should have a better grasp of English grammar. He uses 'we' instead of 'us'. The hymn sung in church is obviously an American hymn, unknown in the UK. The music gives this away. Not in the English hymn tradition at all. It reminded me of 'Bringing in the sheaves' as sung in 'Little house on the Prairie'! The Otis family arrive in a left-hand drive vehicle. Surely they didn't bring it all the way from the US! The upper class accents are really over the top and everyone is rather stereotyped.

I can only assume that the Americans on the production team had more influence than the British members, if there were any. So obviously produced for the US market.

That said, when not totally overacted, the acting is good and the characters, to children, believable. The settings are beautiful.

With a little more attention to detail this could be a good series. Maybe I would recommend it to the children in my family, on a rainy day. They might find each episode a bit long, so I might wait until they're older and hope for a better version. As it is, I find it rather irritating.

Two cheap opening scenes. First, classically overused overhead view of car on road. Second, supposedly a camera view of man riding horse, but rather a man fake riding on something with a green screen of a moving background. However, though I started out giving it one star for a cheap script & production, after 15min. I was up to two stars & as time went on I became impressed with the novelty of our ghostly story (despite the cheap effects), and the humorous yet intelligent acting. As for dialogue, an entertainment in itself, the researchers must have dug deep to come up with the most interesting & rare synonyms describing the everyday routine of life.

This film is enjoyable if you under twelve years of age and are new to all the stereotypes it attempts to portray.

For adults I recommend suspending cynicism and watch it through your inner-child's eye.

It is a whimsical bit of fun not to be taken too seriously.

Some of this film is unbelievably crap and made me wonder how on earth did it get made. Then I recalled it was a BBC production which means jobs for friends in favourable places. Nepotism within the BBC is shockingly awful and the amount of rubbish they commission is embarrassing.

With such a great story to be inspired by the writer, script doctor, and director should have made a classic. They had four hours to use and should be ashamed of what they made.

I really wanted to love this series, and I don't demand perfection. But the cringe factor is so bad that I couldn't get through the first episode. First, some British actors can convincingly portray an American accent - like Hugh Laurie. But none of those are on this show. The American accents are faked so badly that it is distracting and impossible to ignore. I wish they had just stuck with the British accents and changed the story so the family had moved from another part of the UK instead of the US. Secondly, the dialogue feels stilted and the exposition obvious and clunky. The whole thing lacks polish and feels sloppy and low budget. Anthony Head of Buffy fame is a the one bright spot. His acting here is superb as always and the only reason I gave this 2 stars rather than one. But even Anthony Head can't carry the show single handedly. There are a thousand+ better shows out there - go watch one of those instead.