What's funny is I was just asking why KING had not been released on DVD, having watched it ALL DAY this past King Day on TV One anad to my surprise...BOOM! It came out on Jan. 11th. Having grown up watching King I'm at a loss for words...the late Paul Winfield's protrayal of Dr. King was superb, and the march/arrest scenes were almost identical to the actual footage. Watching King for me was almost like being there, I only wish that I'd been blessed with the chance to meet him in person as my mother did. That having been said,off to Media Play & Best Buy I go, GOD BLESS DR. KING(RIP) and PAUL WINFIELD(RIP).

This miniseries is great in that it presents Dr. King as the complex human being that he was with some of his insecurites and personal issues intact as opposed to the saint that he is often portrayed. The intracacies behind the Birmingham, Memphis, and Vietnam campaigns are handled well and Winfield makes a very good MLK. Cicely Tyson does very well as Coretta and incidentally, Rosa Parks is played by MLK's daughter Yolanda. The scenes of MLK smoking cigarettes and the adultery issue will shock a lot of people, but after all, the man was born in Atlanta and not Bethlehem, and these are based on acknowledged facts.

However, these is a scene that will annoy historians and Malcolm X fans. The treatment of King's meeting with M/X is an unfair fictionalization of what really happened. M/X is shown as hatemongering lunatic who encourages people in the ghettoes to burn down their cities. The producers have Malcolm confused with a later generation of militants, as the record shows that while the real Malcolm had his faults, he never publicly condoned mindless violence aside from self-defense.

This aside, and the composition of characters as prototypes of Bayard Rustin and Jesse Jackson aisde, this stays pretty close to the facts. Watch and enjoy, but read a good King bio such as "Bearing the Cross" by Taylor Branch, or "Let the Trumpet Sound" by Stephen Oates afterwards to get a broader picture.

I watched this miniseries the other day and wow was it great. It's very long but every moment is just classic.