I really enjoyed the series, and felt that they did a great job with the budget they had. The last few episodes did feel rushed though, and I think the show would have had a better flow with 10 as opposed to 8 episodes.
The bug-eyed insane William Hamleigh character was a little over the top in an annoying way, but the way things turned out the end for him was sweet justice in more ways than one.
Ian McShane, one of my favourite actors, was great as Waleran although I was a little disappointed that he didn’t call at least one person a cocksucker.
The series definitely generated some interest in Follet’s work, and will be picking up “Pillars” and some of his other books once I’m through with my backlog.
Honestly, this was one eight hour exercise in total mediocrity, sprinkled with bad acting and sealed with a terrible butchering of a fluffy book.
Ian McShane was so bad in this - so ‘mwhhaaa,’ it made me re-think him as a decent actor. His eye rolls, his one dimensional character, his little ‘what, me?’ looks. At first I thought it was just the script, but the end of the movie made me think it was him as well.
The direction was over-the-top heavy handed. The book was thin to begin with - and they went so crazy with changes to add ‘drama’ it was barley passable as an old school network TV miniseries.
Considering all the good TV out there right now, I’d only watch this if you’ve seen everything else.
Well, only a year late to the party, but I Netflixed the entire thing over the weekend. I really enjoyed the book, perhaps because of all that art history I took I actually understood what the problems were going to be ahead of time and just how long of a project building a cathedral would be.
But the book was at its core a story about how a medieval town is formed through the construction of a major architectural project. The core characters revolve around that and that’s what gives the story its focus. The whole dynastic conflict is a backdrop to that story, and too often in the adaptation it takes away from the central struggle to build the cathedral. Too many peripheral characters take up too much screen time.
On the other hand, I don’t have any problem with the production values, which were pretty good all considered for television. In such a long and complex story, a multi-part mini-series was the best way to go about it. The acting had its ups and down - the older actors were usually better at it than the younger (par for the course, I suppose). Ian, Rufus and Matthew were all excellent. Enjoyed it for what it was, but it shows why a book is better than film for telling some tales.
