Even a six-hour adaptation isn't going to do justice to Tolstoy's doorstopper. It is, after all, the sort of book you could take to a desert island and still be ploughing through when the rescue ship hove into view. Nonetheless the Beeb have gamely taken it on, and crammed in every Brit actor of note they can find, with American star Paul Dano as Pierre. Rather confusingly, this includes a couple of the cast of 'Dickensian'. So for the next five weeks we'll have to extrapolate Stephen Rea's Inspector Bucket from a devious Russian aristocrat and Tuppence Middleton's innocent Amelia Havisham from said Russian aristocrat's shallow daughter, though she looks rather more like Messalina than Helene here.
It's visually gorgeous (though we're not sure about one-shoulder dresses in a high society salon), and is shaping up to be perfect Sunday-night escapism. Purist fans of the novel should probably steer clear though.
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