Die Tore der Welt

The storyline was great, the acting above and beyond and the villains were cringe worthy. I saw this on Netflix and was totally saturated with it.

The villains were not only evil it made me feel as if I wanted to reach out and personally reach through time and strangle them myself.

I thought C. Nixon was very inspiring as a villainess. The sex is tame compared to the awesome Borgias series on Netflix. Some complete female nudity, male behind. The sex scenes were more like light Skin-i-Max TV.

All the ranting and raving of the book must say a lot and I might check it out. Although I understand it is quite wordy and time is not always on our side.

If there is something that leaves you full yet wanting more it was this.

Does anything good ever happens to these people? only in the last 10 min of the last episode - otherwise it's 8 episodes of depression. Don't bother.

This is an impressive time trip back to the middle ages. There are a lot of characters to sort out but a great group of actors. Tom Weston Jones is on Copper too. Amazed at the scale of Kingsbridge, which seems a lot bigger since Pillars -- and cleaner.

Love the idea that dung was the best available medicine of the day. Of course seems like some of the characters are finally catching on that maybe that's not such a smart idea. Charlotte Riley's character is the most modern, channeling the Englightenment it seems. As is Miranda Richardson. The state of affairs was truly rank -- corruption, scheming and violence of all sorts, plus the Hundred Years War with France.

So I read and watched and Pillars of the Earth, which I loved despite some misgivings with the TV adaptation. Like Pillars of the Earth, World Without End is an excellent novel, full of historical drama but still accessible through the very human characters in the story. At over 1000 pages, if is a lengthy novel but it was such a gripping story I read it in under 2 weeks. I wish I could say that the TV series did the book justice but sadly it falls flat. Actually, it is worse than that. I found the story to only barely resemble the book in only a few key events. The screenplay is awful, the characters have been ruined by actions that are out of character, the actors ham it up so much that it seems they are embarrassed to be in this series.

I watched 2 and a half episodes and threw in the towel. You can see that the production values are not the same as Pillars of the Earth too. No cool animated beginning, just some cheap looking titles, no recognizable acting talent, cheap looking sets and costumes... I could go on and on. Worse still, the episodes are only about 40 minutes long which gives the TV station lots of time to break up any storytelling with a million commercials (Pillars of the Earth episodes ran almost an hour without commercial breaks) but ultimately it is the liberty that the screenwriters have taken with the story that I could not handle because they really have not crafted a good one by any standard.

I understand now why The Movie Network in Canada took a pass on this one, even though they aired Pillars of the Earth first in Canada a couple of years ago. On that note, you would be wise to follow their lead and give this one a pass too.

Thank God there is no third novel in the series to be ignominiously slain by these people.

I greatly enjoyed the "Pillars of the Earth" miniseries without having read the novel and was then inspired to read World Without End which I loved. However, having watched the first episode of "World Without End" miniseries, I am dismayed to find a greatly altered beginning, minor characters transformed into major ones, and drama that just didn't occur in the book. I'm also not thrilled with some of the casting choices.

Otherwise, the production looks pretty good. You will probably enjoy it if you haven't read the book. Be prepared for possible disappointment if you have.

I supposed I should go and read Pillars of the Earth now and find out what I missed.