Un monde sans fin

World Without End is an amazing television series, full of fascinating characters and twisting plots set within interesting historical times. Loosely based on the Ken Follett novel, the first 7 episodes are exciting and capture the spirit of the book, with small plot deviations suited to television. The finale, Episode 8, diverges greatly from the book and becomes trite, with several unbelievable events, including a sword fight between two highly unlikely combatants. While I look forward to watching the first seven episodes again and would highly recommend them to others, I would skip the finale as it just does not match the quality of the rest of the series.

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.

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.

This is a jolly good yarn - a clever and effective blending of historical fact (King Edward II & III era and the Black Death) and fiction. It's more involving than Pillars of the Earth - the characters are more interesting. It's also more violent with lots of hangings etc. There are some surprising twists and turns and a few exciting battle scenes. Covers a lot of ground with commerce, history, religion, politics, medicine, romance.

The cast is well chosen. Cynthia Nixon plays against type as an evil woman though her accent is a bit off. Oliver Jackson Cohen is quite charismatic as the evil Ralph. Charlotte Riley isn't beautiful but is a convincing healer.

The location and production is quite beautifully filmed in Eastern Europe.

There may be a few story elements that are too fantastical but it doesn't matter this is a good historical epic 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.