Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Console best movie i've ever seen.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

courtneypalmbush-804-853237 This series is just ridiculous. I cannot speak to the quality of the book, but if it is anything like this steaming pile of absurd stereotype and plot, then I'm rating it, too with one star. Even if you like the period costumes and set design, do not fool yourself into thinking this program is conveying anything even close to reality about the Middle Ages. Not a good source. Possibly the worst source ever, in fact. It is far from representative of medieval life...any similarities must have been accomplished by pure accident. There are too many inaccuracies and anachronisms to count--though I will catalogue them and post with an update shortly.

Lammasuswatch I note that some other reviewers here mention that they gave up watching this series part-way through Episode 1. That was probably wise, especially if you like Ken Follett's books.The series from the first book "Pillars of the Earth" was fairly satisfying. So how could "World Without End" be such a fizzer? Where do I begin?Perhaps, with all the production companies involved - from at least three different countries - simply too many cooks spoiled the broth. You get the impression that someone asked all stakeholders to fill out a questionnaire on what they wanted. Then all answers were compiled, and someone decided to include them all. None of the stakeholders had read the book? No problem.The studio moguls obviously wanted at least one international draw-card among the cast. Who gets top billing here? Cynthia Nixon! (Who?) She stood out all right, but for absolutely woeful acting. Very ably assisted by a number of ham-acting sequences by much of the cast at one time or another. (And most of these people can actually act, so you really can't blame anything except poor direction or the awful script.)I often marveled at the way the miniseries characters were turned into cartoon caricatures, making any logical character development almost impossible. The most ludicrous example was changing relatively minor book character Petranilla into a vehicle for Cynthia Nixon to channel mass murderer Lucrezia Borgia - but laughably. And while the fatal character flaws of Godwin in the novel interestingly turn him bit by bit from a basically good person towards ever greater moral degradation, the treatment in the miniseries has him labeled 'baddie' about as soon and unsubtly as possible. I'm sure black stetson hats would not have been thought amiss by some of the people putting this film together.But every character was pretty one-dimensional, good or bad. And to be honest, it was difficult to care too much about what happened to any of them. And what could even the best actors and directors do with this screenplay? Besides its careless historical deficiencies, it often just didn't come together dramatically or logically. From a rather awful first episode in which the clichés come thick and fast, the miniseries actually improves for the middle episodes, but it does eventually get tedious with the continually repeated pattern: 'goodies try to do good, baddie thwarts this for no good reason, goodies back to scratch, next item'. It's turned a complex and generally very satisfactory novel into R-rated late-night soap opera. Historical accuracy is an obvious casualty. Other reviewers have pointed out things wrong with this historically, but no-one else seems to have seen the most obvious and careless error. After witnessing a battle in France, nuns Caris and Meir are seen returning to England by ship, with this shot labeled on screen "Autumn 1341". And in the same scene we see they are accompanied at the dock by (drum roll) plague-bearing rats. Then shortly after, of course, the Black Death makes its entrance. Except that the Black Death didn't even get to Europe until 1347, and certainly not to England until 1348! The director could have got away with no date labeling here, since there was none that existed or that at least stood out anywhere else. But to get the onset of the Black Death - one of the defining events of British and European history - so publicly wrong! All you have to do is look up Wikipedia to check this! But guess what? No-one had the sense to.I was wondering if this gaffe was a result of the international crew? Was the label actually supposed to read "Autumn 1347"? (Which would have been accurate.) Could it have been that a European crew created this graphic, misreading an English "7" as a European "1? Who knows? But that may be an explanation rather than an excuse. The fact that no-one bothered to proof-read this date is completely symptomatic of the carelessness with which this series was put together.Historical accuracy apart, the plot doesn't flow logically either. I have seldom seen a story "tie all strands together" so unsatisfactorily in its concluding episode. It's not this way in the novel, but since the script artificially extends the life spans of the two now principal baddies (Godwyn and Petranilla actually die about two thirds of the way though the novel during the first wave of the Black Death), the miniseries has to somehow kill them off spectacularly. But it even manages to turn these sequences into somewhat ridiculous anticlimaxes.And the final battle! Clearly the medieval miniseries rulebook states that any remotely medieval story must end in an epic final battle, although there is no hint of such in the book and it certainly doesn't suffer for it. Having the series end with the king's army attacking Kingsbridge might have worked, if it were not so unconvincing logically and dramatically. (That's ignoring its historical inappropriateness, but when has anyone in this series cared about that?) Virtually everything about it from the tactics of both attackers and defenders, through to the fight of the two kings does not work logically. (No-one seriously notices that another knight has a sword to the throat of Edward III?!) And then Edward suddenly calls the whole thing off, with everyone obediently stopping the fight. (And really - Thomas Langley IS Edward II? Did no-one ever recognize their former king? Seriously?)I was not able to recall how this miniseries had ended the morning after I watched this last episode, despite wracking my brains and being able to blame neither alcohol nor Alzheimer's. All I actually remembered was laughing in disbelief for the last few minutes. Such was the impression it made. I give "World Without End" a reluctant two stars for the fact that it got better in the middle - for a while.

alemieux34 This feature may have been close to reality in terms of the brutal nature of these dark times, but sometimes it was very difficult to watch. One of the most disappointing aspects of the story were the inability of some of the characters (Ralph, Godwyn for example) never came around. I had hopes that they would somehow change, but they started evil and remained so - and maybe that's typical of these times, but the lines between good and evil were so clearly drawn. Throughout the whole series, there's this great sense of impending doom comes about with the abuse of power by the Queen, the would be King, the Bishop and the Earl. There's a sense of hopelessness that nothing good can come of all this. The ending just gives a brief sense of hope, but it's not fleshed out at all. In general it's a very dark depiction of that ancient time. i only watched all the way to the end to see if there was a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.

Jay_Jay2664 The storyline was great, the acting above and beyond and the villains were cringe worthy. I saw this on Netflix and was totally saturated with it. The villains were not only evil it made me feel as if I wanted to reach out and personally reach through time and strangle them myself.I thought C. Nixon was very inspiring as a villainess. The sex is tame compared to the awesome Borgias series on Netflix. Some complete female nudity, male behind. The sex scenes were more like light Skin-i-Max TV.All the ranting and raving of the book must say a lot and I might check it out. Although I understand it is quite wordy and time is not always on our side.If there is something that leaves you full yet wanting more it was this.