Review: War and Peace (2016)

This is the third version of War and Peace I've tried. The others are the book itself and a sadly boring opera. This is the only one I've finished -- which says more about how short it is than about its quality.

War and Peace is a 2016 miniseries based on the novel of the same name. BBC period dramas are usually good. This is a notable exception.

I recognised several actors:

Lily James (Ella in Cinderella 2015) as Natasha

Tuppence Middleton (Amelia Haversham in Dickensian) as Helene

Stephen Rea (Inspector Bucket in Dickensian) as Vassily

Callum Turner (Theseus in The Crimes of Grindelwald) as Anatole

Kenneth Cranham (Wegg in Our Mutual Friend 1998) as a minor character whose name I can't remember

Gillian Anderson (Lady Dedlock in Bleak House 2005) as Anna

When I gave up on trying to get through the book I wondered why Tolstoy is considered a good author. This series made me wonder even more. From what I've seen he's only notable for writing very long, very boring novels in which nothing ever happens.

Like the book itself the series suffers from a complete inability to decide who the main characters are and what the plot is. One minute the story follows the start of Pierre's disastrous marriage to Helene, the next it's about Napoleon's invasion, and the next everyone's at a party. None of these subplots ever feel like they belong in the same book/series. It's like someone -- either Tolstoy or the director -- tried and failed to imitate Dickens by thinking up as many subplots as possible.

One of the worst things are the costumes. Very few of them bear even the slightest resemblance to what people would actually have worn in the early nineteenth century. That alone makes it clear the series-makers just didn't care. Just as bad is the nudity and incest. I find it very, very hard to believe Tolstoy wrote about either, so for once the blame is entirely on the director/scriptwriter/whoever thought of that.

It wouldn't be so bad if I cared about the characters. Just one sympathetic character would be enough to keep me interested. But all of them are either dull or disgusting, and it was a real struggle to get through the whole series. Honestly I wish I hadn't bothered. It wasn't worth the time or effort.

Is it available online?: Who cares?

Rating: 1/10.