Discovering The Real World Of Harry Potter

I was looking around on NetFlix and found that they had this dvd called Discovering The Real World Of Harry Potter. I'm a big Harry Potter fan so I put it in my queue. I hadn't seen this PBS documentary before. It's from 2001 and it's narrated by Hugh Laurie. The 47 minute program is a jumble of clips and interviews. They show some places that are of interest to the HP fan, like Kings Cross where Harry boards the train to Hogwarts, some of the castles and places that stand in for the places in HP's magical world, and a posh boarding school that was headmastered by a real witch who sold his soul to the devil. There are brief interviews with several people. There are a couple of writers that wrote books about Harry Potter or JK Rowling; Lindsey Frazer wrote Conversations With J K Rowling and David Colbert wrote The Magical Worlds Of Harry Potter. I've read both their books. Don't have any negative feelings about either. There's also interviews with a witch witch, a screenwriter and several people who run the castles and stations that the program visits. Missing are any new interviews with JK. She appears in press footage. There's a lot of discussion about legends that might have influenced JK in the writing of her strories. It's interesting for the HP fan but there's not much new here. I did learn that legend has it Queen Bodicia is buried under Kings Cross train station. It's nice to see some of the buildings used in the movie. I've read enough books on Harry Potter to know how she took knowledge of legends, magic, monsters and mythology and blended it into her story. The dvd has extras, a series of short pieces that add more detail to the people and places already covered in the documentary. None of them have Hugh Laurie narrating them. There's about a half hour of extra, somewhat rehashed, material spread out on 13 featurettes that range from 60 seconds to 7 minutes. There are more short ones that long ones and it's a pain to have to jump back to the menu to see each new one. Play All, motherfucker! There's a short on herbs, several on the places the movie used to film in, another on Merlin. You get the idea. Not a bad dvd but more something that the HP fan would want to see. You can buy the dvd on Amazon but it's about 13 bucks. Not worth it to me and I'm a fan.