War and Peace BBC1

[Petrushka]

Really looking forward to this but I'll be surprised if it displaces the 1972 BBC version with Anthony Hopkins. I see that this latest version is in only six 1 hour episodes while the 1972 runs for 15 hours. As usual I daresay I'll fall in love with Natasha all over again as I did with Morag Hood 43 years ago. She died tragically young in 2002 but her beauty lives on.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'll be surprised if it displaces the 1972 BBC version with Anthony Hopkins. I see that this latest version is in only six 1 hour episodes while the 1972 runs for 15 hours. As usual I daresay I'll fall in love with Natasha all over again as I did with Morag Hood 43 years ago. She died tragically young in 2002 but her beauty lives on.

Me too in all respects, inc the reference to Ms Hood In addition, I remain quite proud of the 11 year-old Caliban spotting something extraordinary in Anthony Hopkins - I remember having no idea who he was but finding his performance riveting and quite different from anything I'd ever seen.

(Paul Dano, in the same role in the new one, is a very good and also unusual actor - could be inspired casting)



Afterthought: also looking forward to seeing the magnificent Jim Broadbent. Talk about unrecognisable.....

[Flosshilde]

I see that this latest version is in only six 1 hour episodes while the 1972 runs for 15 hours.

Which seems to be the practice with new versions of old serials - drastic reduction in running time. Nobody in TV land seems to believe that people are willing to stick with something beyond 5 or 6 weeks.

And in the olden days we didn't have iPlayer or viewing on demand to fill in if we missed an episode. We might have had a VCR to record it, but I'm not sure that it could be set on a timer.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well, HOMELAND has finished (after 12 weeks - and how shatteringly, tearfully too...no-one else here...?) and I've now caught up with those GAME OF THRONES ** episodes I'd missed...(but I'll still go back, again, to cry over Daenerys and those dragons...)

So this better be good!

**quite a LOT longer than 5 or 6 weeks, flosshilde....

[pastoralguy]

I was more concerned with reading my book until Mrs. PG pointed out that the wonderful Greta Scacchi was involved.

[Stanley Stewart]

Me too in all respects, inc the reference to Ms Hood In addition, I remain quite proud of the 11 year-old Caliban spotting something extraordinary in Anthony Hopkins - I remember having no idea who he was but finding his performance riveting and quite different from anything I'd ever seen.

(Paul Dano, in the same role in the new one, is a very good and also unusual actor - could be inspired casting)



Afterthought: also looking forward to seeing the magnificent Jim Broadbent. Talk about unrecognisable.....

Erm...surely Brian Cox?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think I prefer an abridgement such as this, to an inflation, such as "The Hobbit" film trilogy.

[Historian]

Erm...surely Brian Cox?

They do look similar, however, Brian Cox is playing General (later Marshal) Prince Kutuzov. The picture is indeed Jim Broadbent, as Prince Bolkonsky.

[Nick Armstrong]

Erm...surely Brian Cox?

You see my point! That's JB all right!

[johnb]

I was somewhat put off this dramatisation by an interview (I heard on R4) with someone involved (perhaps Andrew Davis?) which gave the distinct impression that the screenplay had been sexed up (shades of the recent Poldark's six-pack).

The FT previewed the first episode as "fancy dress am-dram", saying that the adaptation "has the triteness resulting from self-consciously colloquial dialogue and the lazy tendency to equate period costume slapped on to familiar British actors with drama". It did praise Paul Dano's portrayal of Pierre though. saying it was "the one sensitive characterisation".

I did record tonight's episode and might yet sample it.

[jayne lee wilson]

I guess the only meaningful question after watching episode one of a new TV Drama series is, do I want to watch episode 2?



But, what I ended up asking myself was - is the dialogue in the novel itself this bad?

[Anna]

I guess the only meaningful question after watching episode one of a new TV Drama series is, do I want to watch episode 2?

It's beautifully shot, sumptuous locations, it's a Sunday night costume drama so the answer is yes. What's not to like? (I did dip in and out of the Radio 4 W&P total immersion weekend but don't recall ever seeing any tv adaptation)
I then switched over to Channel 4+1 and watched Deutschland 83 - so that's my Winter Sunday nights viewing sorted.

[Richard Tarleton]

Really looking forward to this but I'll be surprised if it displaces the 1972 BBC version with Anthony Hopkins.

I didn't watch the 1972 version but dimly remember watching (on a poor-quality TV) the Bondarchuk four-part film version with subtitles which was shown on British TV in the late 1970s. This reflected the sprawling scale of the novel. I watched intermittently last night, being busy in the kitchen, it looked OK but (reduced to the size of a Jane Austen serial) can only be a brutal filleting of the novel, with wholesale massacre of characters, plotlines, philosophical digressions and overall loss of scale.... Which isn't to say it shouldn't happen, it just becomes something else.

How many respondents to this thread have read the novel? I read it in 1967, doing little else for 2 months. Interesting to read that Davies had not read it before embarking on his interpretation.

PS I'm afraid James Norton is forever typecast for me as the chilling psycho from Happy Valley (as which, apparently, he will be returning )

[mercia]

Deutschland 83

.... which, off-topic, has me hooked, and more promised apparently from the same stable. - "Walter presents ..." or something.

[aeolium]

I didn't watch the 1972 version but dimly remember watching (on a poor-quality TV) the Bondarchuk four-part film version with subtitles which was shown on British TV in the late 1970s. This reflected the sprawling scale of the novel. I watched intermittently last night, being busy in the kitchen, it looked OK but (reduced to the size of a Jane Austen serial) can only be a brutal filleting of the novel, with wholesale massacre of characters, plotlines, philosophical digressions and overall loss of scale.... Which isn't to say it shouldn't happen, it just becomes something else.

I saw the Bondarchuk film on DVD a few years back and thought it was a magnificent achievement, the casting excellent and the screenplay superb. Mind you, it did cost IIRC the equivalent of the GDP of a small country to make, with its faithful recreations of the major battles and many thousands of extras - no CGI then. It even retained a flavour of the lengthy disquisitions on philosophy, military strategy and history which pepper the book. The earlier BBC adaptation was ambitious for its time but in retrospect seems tepid, like characters in a Thackeray novel on a sort of Grand Tour (and Morag Hood horribly miscast). I don't think there's any point in trying to cram an epic into six one-hour episodes, but I suspect it may have been partly to show that the BBC can still do the big drama adaptation in a year of charter renewal.