The wonderful book, one of the best novels ever to have been written, was done a disservice by this mini series. The novel was a cry against and riposte to the fashionable nihilistic and Western tendencies of the times that were taking hold of some of the privileged Russian youth. The series barely conveys this.
The sets are magnificent and are the sole reason I have given three stars. The costumes look authentic. But the series is "based on" rather than an "adaptation of". It was vanishingly unlikely that any director would have been able to convey properly the social, political and emotional currents of those complex and volatile times so the slavish adherence to the book meant that the whole TV project would be a failure unless it had been adapted for modern audiences while retaining and explaining the themes and background.
The most abject let-down was in the dialogue. The book is driven by it and often the characters have long, involved conversations. Unfortunately, these seem to have been lifted from the book and grafted onto the programme. It just doesn't work. What is acceptable, nay riveting, on the page is verbose and unconvincing on the screen. It's not a Shakespeare play that they are filming and thus have to remain true to the text, it's a novel whose internal logic and conventions are completely different to those of screen or stage.
The actors did their best. However, working against such deficiencies they were struggling. It just wasn't real. They didn't sound true to life. I don't speak Russian so I watched with subtitles. They whizzed by, but even I could tell that not all was being translated. How much worse it must have been for people having to take in great gusts of sometimes intricate, convoluted and lengthy dialogue?
I really can't recommend this at all. Read the book instead!
