007 Favorite Jack Lowden Made His Breakthrough In The BBC’s War & Peace
In 2016, the BBC released a TV adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 classic novel War & Peace. Directed by Andrew Davies, War & Peace is a six-part TV series that aired in 2016 and starred Paul Dano as Pierre Bezukhov, Lily James as Natasha Rostova, and James Norton as Andrei Bolkonsky. War & Peace takes viewers back to 1805 during the Russian Empire to meet Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, who, despite their privileged circumstances, struggle to find meaning in their lives.
As Napoleon’s French army gets closer to Russia’s borders, Natasha’s older brother, Nikolai (Lowden), joins the Imperial Russian Army, which forces him to mature a lot faster. However, this doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own struggles, as while he’s in love with his cousin, Sonya (Aisling Loftus), his parents try to get him to marry a rich bride. War & Peace was a critical success, and at the time of writing, it holds an 88% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 87% popcornmeter score, both giving it a “fresh” certification.
War & Peace was Lowden’s biggest project at the time, and as such, it gave him the exposure and recognition he deserved. The characters in War & Peace are complex and not easy to bring to life, but Lowden gave Nikolai the depth he required as he went from a high-spirited young man to a soldier shaped by the horrors of war. Thanks to War & Peace, Jack Lowden went on to get bigger projects, such as Dunkirk and later Slow Horses.
War & Peace Is TV’s Best Classic Novel Adaptation For Years
As mentioned above, War and Peace is not an easy novel to adapt, due to its length, narrative structure, and complexity in terms of characters, story, and themes. In addition to the stories of its main characters, War and Peace explores the French invasion of Russia and also discusses philosophical themes, adding to the complexity of the novel. However, the BBC found the best way to adapt one of Tolstoy’s finest works to TV.
War & Peace covers the most important parts of the novel and makes it accessible to the audience, with a fast pace but without rushing, and with a blend of politics, family drama, romance, war, and loss. War & Peace also counts on a great cast that delivered incredible performances, both in main and supporting roles.
Adapting classic novels for TV is a difficult and often risky task, but the BBC’s War & Peace is a masterclass on how to do so right, and thanks to it, the
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Release Date
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2016 - 2016-00-00
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James Norton
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Lily James
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Adrian Edmonston
