Beautiful engaging series, but DVD quality is poor
I was very disappointed in the quality of this series on DVD. The picture was very grainy and the sound was uneven. When you are used to top-quality DVDs with a sharp picture and rich colors, this is quite a letdown, and very distracting.

Beautiful story and cinema
I'm glad to have this copy of Flambards, with all episodes. I've loved the series since I was in my teens. I'm fairly musically sensitive, and the first thing that grabbed my attention back in 1981 was the oddly beautiful score. (Contrary to another review, there's no 1970's disco -- that reviewer must never have heard a real disco record.) The story got me later, and heck if I'm still not crushing on Christina!

The film grain from the original material is visible in the video, which can be a little distracting (wonder if there's some software that can fix it), but the images are lovely. The unbridled horses running past the manor house in the introduction remain gripping and elegant as ever.

Flambards DVD
Loved it.It's in wonderful condition & was able to enjoy it without any
problems.

COULD HAVE BEEN INSPIRATION FOR "COLD COMFORT FARM"
If they had not been written at a later date, to me, the K.M. Peyton novels "The Flambards" could have been a part of what inspired Stella Gibbon in 1932 to write her brilliant and very humorous spoof, "Cold Comfort Farm" which is also about an orphaned girl going to live with some very strange (skuzzy) relatives on a decrepit farm. The heroine of that story eventually restores the farm through her own aggressiveness and resilience. This DVD of the BBC's 1978 adaptation of "The Flambards" is no spoof; however, it is a serious tale about an orphaned girl that has exhausted her welcome at her aunts' homes and has come to stay with her very surly, bitter and crippled uncle and his two rather strange sons--one being nasty and a very unkind snob loving to hunt and ride horses and the other being misunderstood but very nice and not a snob hating to hunt and ride horses but loving airplanes. The reason that she is even welcomed in the uncle's home is that when she "comes of age" she has an inheritance which makes her very desirable as a daughter-in-law. Plus once she becomes a "woman of means", she can restore the crumbling Flambards farm.
Although the acting is good and the series gets better as it goes along, I basically found the whole enterprise to be rather dated with the picture quality of the DVD being rather fuzzy especially in the first two episodes and the sound quality being very poor through out all of the episodes--I could not understand the dialog over the irritating background music plus, (I'm afraid, to me), the entire series has one of the worse sound tracts that I've ever heard--it almost drove me to drink (not that I need any excuse)--(I really did not understand the use of the word"mum" over and over in the recurring theme music; it was as if the singers had run out of words to sing and were just making incoherent vocal sounds to the music;after the "mums" stop then there is some infernal whistling . All that I do know it annoyed me immensely.)
I had not seen this program previously; therefore, this was my first exposure to the Flambards. Therefore, I have no great nostalgia for this program which no doubt affected my opinion of this presentation.
Needless, to say, I was disappointed with this DVD of "The Flambards"

Five Tapes out of Six
This a is a fine series, set in that interesting period of British history when aeroplanes, cars, and horses shared the same stage.

The first two episodes are, perhaps, a tad slow, and the theme music is somewhat surreal and unsettling. That said, the production as a whole is rewarding.

I would have given this five stars but for the faulty manufacture of Tape 6. The BFS 6-tape version (discussed here) is defective and the final episode (Inheritance) is missing. I wrote to the Canadian manufacturer and they advise that they are no longer turning out this VHS series and all their stock is depleted. So unless this comes out in its entirety on DVD, you may be out of luck.