I got the DVDs of all eight of the A&E Hornblower movies (1998-2003) for Christmas and just tonight realized that I never really watched the last two, released in 2003, which pick up at the end of Lieutenant Hornblower and go through Hornblower and the Hotspur. I think I did sort of see them in a hotel room with a very bad picture, but never enough to really appreciate them.
As always Ioan Gruffudd is magnificently cast as Hornblower, and has a great cast around him, but as a lifetime fan of the original Forester books, I think I am entitled to say that Paul McGann is too polished and intelligent for Bush (although he's actually my favorite on the series) and Julia Sawalha is just plain too hot for Maria, who is supposed to by dumpy and lower class. I like her a lot, but you can only dress her down so far, and it makes it problematic for her to be the decidedly inappropriate wife for Hornblower, since later on in the books you have to contrast her with the regal Lady Barbara. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and in any event, she does fine and Gruffudd always makes clear that he knows he's made a mistake, and can never hide very well that all things considered, he'd rather be on a ship in harm's way. The problem is that when she looks the way she looks lounging in bed with "Horry" on his few nights ashore, you completely do not understand why he's in such a hurry to get back to the ship! So there's a slight departure from the book here, where Hornblower's relationship with Maria is almost always just an open wound.
The characters are great, the script is okay, and the action on the ships is very good, although the special effects of the ships in the background of the scenes is never better than okay and is often really, really bad. But it's really nice to see an adaptation that's so faithful to the spirit of the original. My chief complaint is that it's been seven years and I am still waiting on A&E to come out with Hornblower and the Atropos, and after that they would just be remaking the three books that constituted the 1951 Gregory Peck movie, and I'm always interested in seeing who the new Lady Barbara is going to be. I just read that A&E can't afford to make any more due to the high production costs, so Gruffudd is trying to get the rights to make them as movies, but has not had any luck so far.