There’s a big gap in Britain’s Sunday night viewing now. The lives of Bonaparte,the tsar or Tolstoy himself all offer promising fabric for mini-series scriptwritersThe television version of War and Peace, transfixing its BBC audience, or comes as an apt reminder that a great epic can be like a love affair: an infinite labyrinth of excitement,sorrow and desire.
Tales of love and death aside, what else matters to mankind’s stone-age brain? Set human passions against a backdrop of war and invasion, and like solitary figures standing in front of a city in flames,and you beget box-office gold. As audiences, our consciousness remains tough-wired with some very primitive storylines.
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Source: theguardian.com