War and Peace Comes to Television

Do you have Tolstoy's War and Peace on your bookshelf gathering dust?  It is quite a story, yet quite an investment of time.   

The Lifetime, A&E, and History networks (in conjunction with the BBC and the Weinstein Company) would like to help you along, for the four-night television version of War and Peace starts tonight.  Now you can experience the Napoleonic wars in Russia and learn more about the families caught up in this struggle - the Bezukhovs, Bolkonskys, Drubetskoys, Kuragins and Rostovas.  

Filmed in Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania to make the setting (and cold weather) as authentic as possible, Paul Dano, Lily James, and James Norton supply the talent for the main characters to great effect.  Here is a quick look if you want to see for yourself. 

The series has already premiered in Great Britain to much praise.  The Guardian was basically swooning:

This is proper, proper costume drama at its most lavish and its most dreamily, romantically Russian. This is how you do it, people. This is how you do it. Stop all period dramas being made now because nothing is going to match up to this. 

It is time to get into the act, turn on the television, and enjoy a warm couch on a cold winter's evening.  This should be one spectacular show.