After War and Peace, Les Mis (but without the songs)
MILLIONS of television viewers were reduced to tears last night as they bid an emotional farewell to War and Peace, which featured agonising death scenes and broken hearts.
But it may come as some consolation to learn that Andrew Davies, the scriptwriter, has plans to return to the coveted BBC1 Sunday evening slot with another epic: a non-musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
The 79-year-old said that the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was involved in his adaptation of the Tolstoy drama, was already on board and that they were soon due to begin talks with the BBC – which would be “silly” not to take it.
In the meantime, Davies admitted that the dramatic denouement to War
and Peace was all but guaranteed to have left viewers in “floods of tears” as they witnessed executions and endured the torturous deaths of several main characters.
“It’s a hard watch, in a way, because there is so much sadness,” Davies said. “But there was a wonderful conclusion, so it’s heart-breaking and then heartwarming.”
The episode, which stretched 20 minutes beyond the series’ usual hourlong slot – the first time the BBC had granted an extension to a Sunday evening finale – was expected to provoke a huge reaction from viewers.
The series has proved a hit with critics, and was enthusiastically received by the public, with 6.3 million tuning in to watch the first episode and 5.1 million watching last week’s penultimate
instalment, despite claims of historical inaccuracy and complaints about male nudity and sex scenes that were not in the novel.
It begs the question as to how Davies, who was behind critically acclaimed television versions of Pride and Preju
dice, Bleak House and Vanity Fair, will go about adapting Les Misérables, Hugo’s classic tale of revolution in 19th-century France.
“It’s another big epic story and I think people will be surprised that there is so much more to it than they maybe realise,” he told The Daily Tele
graph.
“It’s an immensely powerful story about appalling levels of poverty and deprivation and how people transcend [them]; it’s about redemption and revenge and the extraordinary relationship between Jean Valjean and a little girl he brings up.
“The pursuit of Javert, the indomitable detective who lets it get personal, is classic film noir.”
Davies said he hoped that those who loved the Eighties musical would enjoy the story without the songs, admitting that he was no fan of the stage production or the 2012 film version that starred Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Eddie Redmayne.
“I hated, particularly, the film of the musical because the singing was so appalling,” Davies said. “And I did not really find myself bewitched by the stage musical – but then, so many people can’t be wrong.”
Davies acknowledged that he would love the potential adaptation to be broadcast on Sunday evenings.
“I would always want to be on the BBC on a Sunday night. It’s my absolute favourite place to be.
“They would be silly not to go for it, but they might think it’s been done too many times.”
‘I think people will be surprised that there is much more to Les Misérables than they maybe realise’
So War and Peace is over, and I can’t remember the last time I was so seduced by the storytelling or sublime visual power of a TV drama. Thanks to Andrew Davies who adapted it, Tolstoy’s novel has been demystified: its brilliance shared in a way that was truncated but never at the expense of psychological insight or emotional richness. In the wake of an astonishing feature-length final episode, the best of the run, it is safe to say that this is the greatest TV costume drama of the past decade and has set a new standard for a genre for which we are already renowned all over the world.
Last year, the corporation achieved notable critical acclaim with Wolf
Hall, but in comparison, that adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s two novels seems like only a qualified success, reliant as it was on Mark Rylance’s cerebral, watchful central performance as Thomas Cromwell.
War and Peace offered so much more – direction from Tom Harper that captured both the necessary historical sweep and the flawed intimacies of human interaction, at least three exquisite pieces of acting and, at its core, a romanticism that even in the series’s darkest moments kept you hooked. Perhaps the only disappointment has been its relative brevity – six and a half hours was just too little to take in the sheer scope of the novel – and this was particularly evident in Natasha’s (Lily James) emotional trajectory as she bounced from Andrei to Anatole to Andrei to Pierre in what felt like a matter of moments.
We experienced what seemed like a hundred heartbreaks in the final episode as Napoleon and his troops arrived in Moscow. The air in the screening I attended was punctuated by barely controlled sobs – sobs at the death of Andrei, at Sonya’s sacrifice, at the faithful dog mourning the demise of his master. Indeed, death was never far from anyone’s mind and Harper channelled it with a series of directorial flourishes. An early scene in which young Petya Rostov (Otto Farrant) glimpsed the brutality of the invading army prefigured the boy soldier’s death on the battlefield. Pregnant Helene (Tuppence Middleton) lost her baby and died a bloody and solitary death that was set against a scene of prisoners crunching through the snow of a Russian winter. And most daringly, we saw the fatally wounded Andrei (James Norton) ascend to the afterlife, sent on his way by a vision of Natasha in a marigold dress. It sounds horribly selfindulgent, but it wasn’t – the emotional investment we made as viewers meant this was a well-earned piece of cinematic licence.
There was a lot to savour in the performances. Of the young leads, Lily James proved she is more than a whirl of girlish fizz – that lovely sunflower of a face gradually creasing as life piled on numerous disappointments for Natasha. “We can love each other,” she told the dying Andrei, but the discernible crack in James’s voice meant she knew it was too late. Paul Dano as Pierre was fine, too, in a difficult role. His philosophical ramblings largely expunged by Davies, Pierre’s questing intellectualism seemed leaner, easier to identify with and finally hardened by a sense of purpose. That’s not to say that Pierre lost his sense of wonder, and a late scene in which he remembered his fellow prisoner’s advice on how to savour a potato as, newly released, he tried to devour one whole was delivered by Dano with a quiet and compelling precision.
The most consistent performance of the series came from Jessie Buckley, a name new to me and wonderful as the plain and steadfast Marya. Buckley never struck a false note, always coming across as a beacon of warmth, shoring up the other characters against uncertainty. When Marya was finally united with Nikolai (Jack Lowden), Buckley’s reaction was controlled but heartfelt and utterly believable. “There is a great deal still to come,” said Pierre in the final scene as he and Natasha, now together and with new children and more familiar loved ones in attendance, gathered for lunch al fresco. But for the millions of us who have watched this fascinating tale of fate and forgiveness week after week, there isn’t a great deal still to come. Sunday nights won’t be the same without War
and Peace. I can’t think of any drama series currently in production that is likely to replicate its success.