Why we’re watching... BBC’s War & Peace

New Year – new TV dramas. It’s traditional. But, with BBC2 and Channel 4 holding back for the time being, don’t expect anything too different or particularly innovative. Indeed, ‘new’ is hardly the best term to describe this year’s early crop. There’s a swathe of returning crime dramas: Silent Witness (BBC1); Death in Paradise (BBC1); Midsomer Murders (ITV); Shetland (BBC1) – the first two occupying precisely the same day and time slots they had in January 2015.

Then there’s a roster of reliables: Call the Midwife (BBC1 – also in its usual Sunday 8pm slot), Mr Selfridge (ITV, now Fridays) and Endeavour (ITV, Sundays, in the slot Foyle’s War had in 2015, so that’s a period detective show in place of, er, a period detective show). 

Jericho (ITV, in a graveyard Thursday slot) is certainly novel, but seems to have been cobbled together from a variety of familiar genres, while Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (ITV, Sundays) looks to be following the same path as the doomed Jekyll and Hyde by attempting to fill a family slot with a formula clearly aiming for the Game of Thrones demographic. We must wait for Friday evening to get the first glimpse of the promising new Sky 1 contribution – Stan Lee’s Lucky Man.

Which just leaves the big one – the most discussed drama of the new year: BBC1’s impressive adaptation of War & Peace (Sundays at 9pm – the traditional slot for costume dramas and adaptations of literary classics). There have only been two episodes so far, but first impressions are good. It looks wonderful, the characters are well-drawn and acted, and there’s a gradual building towards scenes of greater intensity as we get to know them and their stories.

It’s easy to see that no expense has been spared and that it can be seen in the light of a BBC wanting to make a big impression at the start of charter-renewal year, but that cannot detract from the fact that this is high quality television drama of the sort we have come to expect in a genre which, while hardly new, still takes a great deal of art and skill to get right.

A great cast can be pretty much taken for granted, but the writer and director need to be at the top of their game. That is certainly the case with Andrew Davies, British television’s go-to adaptor of the classics – sometimes accused of adding sex scenes for effect, but here seemingly very much at home. Tom Harper, the director, is a great fit too – with a fine track record for both the emotionally intense (This Is England ’86) and the visually stylish (Peaky Blinders).

While the classic adaptation is a constant on British TV, it’s a long time since this particular work has been tackled. You have to go back to the BBC production of 1972, which itself is the only other time it has been done here. Maybe the scale of the piece has been regarded as daunting, and back in 1972 it was similarly presented as one of the BBC’s most ambitious drama ventures. Looking at pictures of Anthony Hopkins as Pierre in 1972 and Paul Dano in the same role today, the similarity is striking, but otherwise the two productions are very different.

Most notably, the 1972 production came in a mammoth 20 parts, befitting the size of the novel. Much has been made of the fact that the current adaptation runs for only six episodes, but that seems about right for today’s television landscape and Davies is doing a fine job in retaining the essentials of the drama and moving the plotlines forward at an appropriate pace. In 1972, the three channels could rely on retaining audiences over a long time span, but this is no longer the case. Davies will have needed to include the first battle at the end of his first episode, both for the dramatic balance between the ‘peace’ scenes and those of ‘war’ and to keep the viewers watching. In 1972, you would have had to wait until episode three before the ‘war’ stuff arrived.

There is also a massive contrast between the look and feel of the two productions. In 1972, most of the action was studio-bound in constructed sets and shot on videotape, giving the theatrical feel common to TV drama of the time, though the war scenes had to be separately shot on film, on location, and uncomfortably inserted at the editing stage. Today’s high-definition, widescreen production has the cinematic feel of modern high-end television drama, has been shot on location, and has been made as a co-production with The Weinstein Company.

With four episodes to come and colder weather on the way, it looks like War & Peace will prove the perfect way to start the TV year.