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.
Cynics may say that the lack of a 'three' or a 'four' in the title allows for growing room, should the series be successful. Adapting the entire Dumas sequence of novels all the way to 'The Man in the Iron Mask' would mean ageing the actors some thirty odd years, after all, and in the days of serialised novels, the author packed in a fair heft of wordy padding that can be less than a thrilling read. Far better to have our heroes in lots of off-piste adventures, and replace them when they wear out. It may happen quickly, since 'reinventing' anything for the 21st Century seems to involve making it faster and more physical. Our heroes are here played by relative unknowns except for Tom Burke as Athos, and their arch-enemy Cardinal Richelieu is none other than our new Dr. Who, Peter Capaldi.
For purists, it's not a good start. "Paris, 1630", says the onscreen blurb, which is a full four years after D'Artagnan originally clomped into the city on his father's yellowed horse. Not a major difference, perhaps, but things quickly diverge further from the original, which admittedly is only 'based on the characters by Alexandre Dumas'. This is less the 'Sherlock' treatment though than the 'Robin Hood' one, with the merry band appearing strangely modern and each week facing a different, resolvable case of swashbuckling, intrigue and romance. Extra characters abound, and the writers have chosen to change some particulars with no obvious reason. Porthos is not the giant hercules of the novels, nor Milady the fair 17th Century ideal of beauty, and she has already identified her fallen-noble husband in his disguise as a musketeer; the super-subtle subterfuge of Richelieu is also exchanged for a Cardinal who stoops to disposing of his enemies directly.
Although none of these are deterrents to non-Dumas fans, and perhaps only a minor annoyance to those who aren't purists, it's hard to see what the series offers (other than Tom Burke, whose brooding, drunken Athos may yet rival the old hellraiser Oliver Reed in the sumptuous Lester film version of the 1970s). The newly-invented plotlines are unoriginal, and having already imperilled the lives of at least one of them, it's hard to see how the series will build thrills towards its 'season finale' - that's last episode to most of us in the UK - a whole 9 episodes away. Its titles may be based on those of 'Ripper Street', but this fails to do for 17th Century France what 'Ripper' did for 19th Century Whitechapel. Probably not helped by the females appearing in semi-undress that wouldn't look out of place in the Wild West. It's getting to be a cheap shot to use established characters to write new storylines, because unless those plots are good enough to rival the originals, or go somewhere excitingly different, it's a pointless exercise. Why not adapt a work and keep the elements that made it good in the first place, or else create something entirely new?
