Un monde sans fin

"The Pillars of the Earth" started with a great punch and a gripping intrigue. I enjoyed every minute of it until the last episode. The acting was top notch. So, I was eager to watch "World Without End" but when I did I didn't feel any interest. The characters are flaky and boring, and by the second episode I'm still not sure where the story is going. The casting is bad, the actors are bad. I wish this series had a true villain acted by someone like Ian McShane! Instead, the villains are superficial and lack any credible evil. Even the good guys can't be appreciated for they lack determination and assurance. A very disappointing start for sure, I hope the series improves in future episodes, but I'm not counting on it.

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.

It starts in 1327. The old king Edward III loses the civil war to his french Queen Isabella. She installs her son Edward III in as the new king. A knight Sir Thomas escapes after the murdered of the imprisoned former king to the fictional town of Kingsbridge. He seeks sanctuary as a monk. The toad Sir Roland uses his influence with the Queen to take over as Earl of Shiring. He launches a reign of terror condemning Edmund Wooler as well as the old Earl and others to death. Edmund's evil sister Petranilla (Cynthia Nixon) who poisoned Edmund's wife bribes to get Edmund freedom. Edmund's daughter Caris (Charlotte Riley) has the feel for medicine but the backwards world has little use for her except Petranilla is sending her to marry the brutal Elfric Builder. Petranilla's son is the weasel Godwyn (Rupert Evans). Roland spares the lives of the old Earl's sons taking Ralph as his squire while Merthin is given as Elfric Builder's apprentice. There are about twice as many other important characters.

It's a maze of characters. This feels like a cheaper version of shows like Game of Thrones without the dragons. It's work to stay on top of every character. Basically the theme is bad things happen to good people. The world is an ugly place and people are ugly, too. It feels very repetitive. The best ugly people has to be Cynthia Nixon and Rupert Evans. That's a crazy mother and son duo. Caris feels a little too modern. She should realize what comes with the world she lives in. She seems to be always shocked at the injustice. Overall, there are good actors in a reasonable mini-series.

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.