Le Comte de Monte-Cristo

I've been a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo since reading the book years ago, but I've struggled to find an adaptation that truly worked for me.

The films are too short to do the story justice, and while the popular 1998 French-Italian miniseries had its charm, it feels a bit dated now and takes some liberties with the plot.

I was actually anticipating the new 2024 French film adaptation when this English TV series appeared out of nowhere (though it is still a French-Italian production).

This series is the best adaptation I've seen so far. After watching it, I can confidently say I'm less excited about the film (although three hours long, it probably still not long enough to include all story elements).

It's been a long time since I read the book and I don't remember every detail, but the series seems faithful to the story and the eight episodes give the plot room to develop. It simplifies some secondary character and story arcs, but overall, it covers much of the novel.

My only critique is that the middle episodes did get a bit convoluted, and I sometimes struggled to keep track of the three families. (To be fair, I'm terrible with names, which didn't help.)

Regardless, I highly recommend this series, whether or not you're a fan of the book. My wife, who hasn't read it, loved the series just as much-and even asked to keep watching, which is rare for her.

This is one of the greatest of revenge tales. Even Lew Wallace borrowed from "The Count of Monte Cristo" when he wrote "Ben-Hur" around 40 years after "Monte Cristo" was first published.

A few reviewers on here take issue with how this veers off from the book and don't give it a high rating for that reason. Every adaptation of "Monte Cristo" veers off from the book. That has to happen because the multi-faceted revenge story is complex and wasn't meant to be watched, just read. This veers off in ways that enhance the theme of this story.

This series is a great watch. We couldn't stop. We wanted to know what he was going to do next. And because there was so much irony, many scenes were surprisingly funny as Dantes' victims fell into his web.

Sam Claflin was detached, pained, clever, single-minded and charismatic, credibly portraying everything that Dantes needed to be to pull off his revenge.

I have seen less than 50 percent of Bille August work and never liked any of his movies, actually most of it made me wanna puke and think he is totally overrated. Mediocre movies that I feel are so poorly made but this one is just amazing.

Maybe it is because this Story is just so amazing, that his talent finally come to show. But this is the best version of the The count of Monte Christo I have ever seen.

Great acting, great flow in the story, cinematic experience was superb felt like a historical experience and the audio was amazing.

Our family, old and young, was glued to the screen for two days.

The only minus was the pretentious birth name of his daughter who had a minor role in the movie which she did, ok. So we withdraw the tenth star.

Out of ALL of the versions of this wonderful tale of abstract revenge; this series happens to be the most wonderful of all. Although it lacks the action of the predecessors, it is the CLOSEST adaptation to the novel. This series encompasses the majority of the book and in such, it should be deemed as a must watch be any and everyone that loves this novel. This adaptation shows all aspects of the angst of the protagonist. In Edmond Dantes, you can see that he struggles with doing what his heart desires as revenge but nonetheless he goes forward even in his one on one interactions with Mercedes, he still goes forward. Dumas would have LOVED this rendition.

I'm extremely happy with how this series was made. Not only have they found a way to make it realistic, but they've also found a way to make the story so precise that it could have easily happened in reality. One of the few adaptations I can say is wonderful. The cast and locations are breathtaking in their authenticity.

I appreciate the fact that they changed the story just enough to make it more feasible, as compared to random. The issue with the original was always there were too many things that had to align just right for it to work. That's not the case with this series, they made it very believable.

!0/10 well done, truly fantastic work.