BBC’s War and Peace hailed as ‘irresistible’
Andrew Davies, the screenwriter who has caused controversy among literary snobs for his reinvention of revered classics, has pulled off a successful adaption of Leo Tolstoy’s War and
Peace, according to Telegraph critic Ben Lawrence. The man who made Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy emerge from a lake in a wet shirt was given the task of adapting one of the longest novels ever written into a palatable six-part series for a Sunday night audience on BBC One, starting in January. “As pure entertainment, this is irresistible,” writes Lawrence.
War and Peace
BBC One
FEW tasks can be more daunting than adapting Tolstoy’s War and Peace, one of the longest novels ever written, into a palatable six-part series for a mainstream Sunday night audience.
There are hundreds of characters, involved and deeply entangled plotlines and the big issues – sex, death, love, religion – which Tolstoy expertly manipulated on to an epic canvas. Clearly Andrew Davies, the man behind such lauded literary adaptations as Middlemarch, Pride and
Prejudice and Vanity Fair, likes a challenge and he has form when it comes to 19th-century doorstops.
His skilful filleting of Bleak House in 2005 is one of the greatest achievements in British TV costume drama and on the strength of this first episode, he has succeeded again. Whereas Bleak House was a fine example of doing a great deal on a shoestring, this new War and Peace is lavish and, at times, breathtaking. Fans of British costume drama will never have witnessed anything before on this scale.
In adapting a work of such weight, there was a danger Davies could assume too much prior knowledge of the viewer or, conversely, take too much time explaining the story of Russia during the reign of Alexander I and the build-up to the 1812 French invasion by Napoleon. But in the early scenes he skilfully delineates all the major characters.
He’s aided by several very good performances. James Norton ( Grantchester, Happy Valley) is commanding as the cynical Andrei, who makes a fateful decision to be an
aide de camp in the Napoleonic Wars. “You’re the most brilliant man,” he’s told early on. “So they say,” comes the tired response. Here is a man who already knows he has the weight of history on his shoulders.
There was some doubt in my mind that Downton Abbey’s Lily James would have the ability to carry the role of Natasha, the silly head-in-the-clouds romantic, but she gives an infectious performance here, perfectly capturing the idealism of youth. “Don’t they look fine in their uniforms?” she remarks as the men are sent off to the battlefields, her naivety seeming heartbreaking. If James can carry off the later scenes as Natasha starts to learn life’s hardest lessons, then she will have earned herself a place in the A-list of British acting talent.
But the acting honours go to Paul Dano as Pierre. It’s a difficult role, as anyone who has managed to get through the novel will know. The misfit Pierre often acts as a mouthpiece for Tolstoy’s philosophical musings and he doesn’t always leap off the page. Yet the 31-yearold American actor (who gave such a memorable, chilling performance in
12 Years a Slave) adeptly shows an emotional richness, a watchfulness, which is thrilling for the viewer.
Andrew Davies has, in the past, caused controversy among literary snobs for his reinvention of revered classics. This is the man, after all, who made Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy emerge from a lake in a wet shirt (in the original script he was nude). Already, there has been some speculation about an incest scene between Helene (Tuppence Middleton) and Anatole Kuragin (Callum Turner). Tolstoy hinted at this but Davies unsurprisingly makes it more overt. However, the bedroom scene (chastely lit) is not graphic and merely serves as a reminder of the Kuragins’ amorality.
The budget for the production is undisclosed but the involvement of the Weinstein Company is felt throughout. The battle scenes, although not quite Hollywood standard, are far more effective and more ambitious than anything previously seen on British TV. The deliriously beautiful St Petersburg interiors (many in fact filmed in Latvia and Lithuania) draw you into an opulent but ultimately doomed world.
The cinematography, too, is lush and inviting as the camera spreads over glowering mountains and vast, unknowable lakes. Strangely, Tolstoy helps in that respect. Few 19th century writers were as prophetically cinematic and you can see his panoramic eye for muddy battlefields and echoing ballrooms in Tom Harper’s production.
Ardent fans of the novel may feel the need to list various omissions. Yet a production of War and Peace that slavishly, obsessively followed the original is unlikely to be as irresistible as this.
War and Peace begins on BBC One on Jan 3