War & Peace (1972)

The 2016 series of War & Peace was not the first time that the BBC had adapted the novel of War and Peace for TV. All the way back in 1972 they made a version that was even longer - more than three times the length of the new series - and as all we long cats know, longer is better.

On top of that (as if being in 20 parts was not enough!) they got Anthony Hopkins to star in it as Pierre Bezukhov. He was not super-famous then, although he had been in The Lion in Winter (a favourite film of Gamma Longcat, especially during the colder months) in 1968.

Pierre first appears in the second scene of the first episode, alongside none other than Colin Baker (best known as Blakes 7's Bayban the Butcher* but most recently seen by me in the final part of Fall of Eagles), who is the second most famous actor to appear in the series. In the '70s Colin Baker was young and handsome, so he was well cast as the dashing but dastardly antagonist Anatole Kuragin, back when he looked like this:

Purr.

In episode 10 Anatole tries to elope with Natasha Rostova (Morag Hood) despite secretly already being married - naughty Colin! However, Pierre knows his secret and so goes to confront him, leading to a fight scene where Anthony Hopkins bashes poor Colin's head off of a sofa:

Colin carries on acting like the true pro he is, even though Anthony Hopkins is busy doing enough acting for both of them!

This series looks like had a bigger budget than most of the other BBC historical drama series that I have watched from roughly the same era, as evidenced by the extensive battle scenes with large numbers of soldier extras - at least compared to other series with military plots such as The First Churchills or Fall of Eagles, both of which went to some lengths to avoid showing scenes of battle whenever they could avoid it.

Even so, the series is not nearly as lavish as the recent remake was, which is most obvious if you compare the ballroom scenes that the 2016 series did on a far grander scale. But the extra running time of the older series allows it to feel the more epic in scope, and so better captures the feel of the original book. This is also achieved through the recurring use of voiceover monologues to show us the thoughts of the main characters - perhaps this technique was too old-fashioned for the 2016 series to make use of, but it also would not have had the time to use it even if it had wanted to.

For example, here we see a scene in which Prince Andrei (Alan Dobie) has been wounded at the battle of Austerlitz (said battle gets the whole of episode five devoted to it) and he monologues at length about seeing the sky, ironically unaware that the French Emperor Napoleon is close enough to him to be in the background of the same shot.

Napoleon is played by the third most famous actor in the series, David Swift, who was Henry in Drop the Dead Donkey and would, like Colin Baker, go on to have a minor role in Fall of Eagles. Though unlike Colin he would not go up against Paul Darrow in a Blakes 7 ham-off.

A curious aspect of the series is the way that the main characters who are killed off always die off-screen, with their deaths being referred to by other characters after the fact. While we see the emotional effects these deaths have upon the other characters, not witnessing the deaths themselves robs them of some impact. This means that Colin Baker does not even appear in the battle of Borodino episode (BBC saving a bit of money where it could?) and instead Prince Andrei mentions that he saw Anatole there several episodes after the battle is over.

The weakest part of the whole series is the very last episode, which is an extended epilogue that takes scenes implied by the end of the book and extends them out unnecessarily. While the BBC's Lord of the Rings adaptation spent an episode-and-a-half on the 'tea and medals' after the fall of Sauron, at least that includes the essential Scouring of the Shire bit. War & Peace takes up two whole episodes after the French retreat from Russia, about twice as much as is necessary.

This is really an issue with pacing rather than length, as the story is easily long enough to fill the 20 parts. It makes a good series, albeit one where the last quarter is the weakest, and the journey to get there more enjoyable than the arrival.

* Not really of course, he's best known for being in Doctor Who... as Commander Maxil, lol!