[TV] The Pillars of the Earth - World Without End

[CeeKay]

so, anyone catch this tonight?  Part one was on tonight (I imagine it will be on Netflix instant too soon if not already) but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.  the previews looked good, and it's got Ian McShane, even though I doubt he character will be going on about cocksuckers 

[Crusis]

The show was pretty decent. I was busy running around the kitchen for parts of it but what I sat down for were well done. It followed the book pretty closely from what I remember.

[CeeKay]

made the mistake of putting it on just a bit after I posted  I enjoyed it even though things seemed to move a bit too quickly at the beginning, but then again the two hours shown last night were episodes 1 & 2, with only 6 left I guess the pacing wasn't too bad.

I never did read the book, so that may help enjoying it more since I won't be noticving anything left out or done differently.

[notrich]

so, anyone catch this tonight?  Part one was on tonight (I imagine it will be on Netflix instant too soon if not already) but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.  the previews looked good, and it's got Ian McShane, even though I doubt he character will be going on about cocksuckers  

It was pretty good... regarding your last part - I find it hard to believe that someone has not put up some "modified" scenes from this series with some overdubs from the cocksucker series.

[Chaz]

It's on Netflix instant now.  I'll have to watch it at some point soon.

[Moliere]

You can watch them online.

[EngineNo9]

So for someone not familiar with the book(s), what is this about?

[Chaz]

The events surrounding the construction of a medieval cathedral over a 40 year period.  The book is well worth reading, even if the characters are a bit black and white.

[hispanicgamer]

The events surrounding the construction of a medieval cathedral over a 40 year period.  The book is well worth reading, even if the characters are a bit black and white.

I would second the recommendation. Pillar of the Earth and the sequel World Without End was perhaps one of my favorite historical reads. Good books and I am hoping Starz didn't ruin the story. I'll be watching tonight on my Roku box.

[CeeKay]

holy cow, didn't realize it but they also did World Without End but Starz isn't showing it in the States, Reelz is, and it just started the 17th.

[Rumpy]

The World Without End miniseries is quite terrible, and this is coming from someone who really liked the Pillars miniseries, and I know some didn't like it due to the problems it had. I'm mostly watching it out of curiosity at this point, but I'm finding it to be a rather dull cast combined with a complete travesty of what they've done with the story. This has to be one of the worst adaptations of anything I've seen. It almost feels like it doesn't have a story because they're picking events that don't flow very well. It's sad to see that Ken Follett is happy with this. In short, it doesn't even look like the Kingsbridge we saw in the Pillars Miniseries.  I'd expected them to keep that same set and expand it and adapt it for this, but it looks and feels completely different, which is likely due to the lower budget. Everything about it feels of a lower budget and makes the Pillars miniseries feel like Shakespeare.  I can't even begin to list the number of problems the miniseries has as there are too many, but if one should give you an idea, it's that Lady Maud aka Empress Maud is in this, despite the fact that it's about 150 years since Pillars. Yep, not kidding. They've been playing this since late September in Canada, in case you're wondering.

[Canuck]

Sorry to hear about that. I loved both books and the first mini-series.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, same here. One of the problems is lack of time. They just can't reasonably capture the essence of the books in 8 episodes, and the first episode really suffers from that. It tries to introduce too much with too little time, not to mention that Pillars was commercial-free, whereas with this, at least up here, time is cut short due to commercials. Really should have been 10-12 episodes to do it any justice, which was also a problem for Pillars, but I thought they did a reasonably good job with that. Here though, it really loses traction.

The other problem is that they totally go off on a tangent, right from the start. Forget it looking like the book, it's not even close. The book presented a growing Kingsbridge and a need to upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate the growth, combined with the struggles within the town. You know, bridge collapses and Merthin is hired to rebuild it out of stone, and that was one of the key points of the book, much like the Cathedral was in Pillars, where here it's largely glossed over, and Merthin doesn't have much of a role other than to be Caris' lover. But largely, the book was about growing pains, and you don't get any of that at all from watching this. There's no real narrative, no driving force, no big project to give the town some ambition and sense of purpose, other than Caris' hospital, and even then, it's handled poorly.

I like to think the book was more subtle at times, where everything was not quite so black & white as it's presented here. In the Pillars Miniseries, you at least had some idea behind why they were scheming, but here it just seems like the scheme of the week, thrown in for good measure because they have to have some resistance. And the characters? Wooden as all hell, and I'm surprised nobody got splinters. They're either good or evil with nothing in-between. Cynthia Nixon is the schemer bitch in this, having taken the job from Waleran, and I'm surprised she hasn't killed off the whole town by now, as she gets away with everything. And Godwyn, I never saw him as evil as they're portraying him to be and I never explicitly thought him to be a villain, but rather someone with some different ideas of how to lead,  someone whose different ideas inadvertently got him into trouble, such as outdated thinking, which is where Caris comes in with being more progressive, but they've totally fudged that up.

What's funny though is that Copper is airing on the same channel as this, and they're airing them back to back, and Tom Weston-Jones is in both of them, and one week Copper ended with a shot of Corky,  WWE starts up with a shot of Merthin.

[Rumpy]

With it having ended in Canada, here's a review I found that pretty much sums up my feelings about it and describes the problems it had.

http://garwulf.livejournal.com/89253.html