Pillars of the Earth

The Pillars of the Earth, a six-part, eight-hour miniseries debuting Friday with a two-hour punch, delivers enough surprises to enthrall any thriller buff.

The abundance of material plays out naturally, in a nicely arranged script by John Pielmeier that leans heavily on the R-rated soap side of things. You'll probably get lost in the high melodrama while watching this massive chess game, where the pawns are as prominent as the bishops, the king, and the queen.

Pillars does a surprisingly good job of maintaining story coherence. It also avoids what might be called the Fairytale-Princess Fallacy of costume dramas; the muck and brutality of the Middle Ages are on full display.

This requires commitment, it requires paying attention and it has few cartoonish interludes to give the audience a breather. It also reminds us the value and satisfaction we can find in a complex production executed well.

Those willing to pay close attention to the long list of characters will be rewarded with a diverting story and several winning performances.

This is one of those potboilers where the good guys (Madfadyen as a pious friar, Sewell as a master builder) are impossibly noble, suffering in a lawless time through the murderous machinations of the endlessly scheming villains (most notably McShane hamming it up as a cunningly ambitious church official).

While the climax isn't entirely satisfying, Pillars does create strong roles for its female characters, Natalia Woerner's earthy Ellen and Atwell's determined ingenue balancing Parish's delicious wickedness. Frankly, the whole exercise would be worth the price of admission (or rather, subscription) simply for the cobra-eyed McShane.

Admirers of the novel probably will be pleased. Average viewers who never read the novel (or any historic fiction) will be either confused or bored--possibly both.

While Pillars can seem a bit comic, it isn't camp. The characters and their beliefs are treated seriously and with respect, and no one is without some virtue or some sin.

With a little bit of effort on your part--The Pillars of the Earth is pretty good viewing. It's the sort of expansive miniseries that we never see on network television anymore.

Things get pretty wacky by the end--actually, they get wacky well before the end--but however unlikely, the proceedings are kept watchable by a cast that notably includes Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland, Rufus Sewell, and Eddie Redmayne.

The language is occasionally anachronistic, McShane's bishop is perhaps a bit too Snidely Whiplash to be believable and I'm not sure there's a subtle moment in the entire eight hours, but The Pillars of the Earth is nevertheless the television equivalent of a page-turner: Once I'd stuck the first DVD in my player, I could find time for little else until I'd finished it.

Yes, there's enough here to keep you tuning in. Just don't reach for the stars. They're out to lunch.

The Pillars of the Earth will go down painlessly for the fan of this sort of epic; while it's predictable and never exactly sweeping, it's certainly eventful, and the production values are above average.

All the court intrigue ends up somewhat more confusing than intriguing.

In truth, it's the bountiful hamminess of McShane and the other evildoers that makes Pillars great fun, even if it's never going to be a candidate for "Masterpiece Theatre."

The film is overwrought and wearying, salvaged mainly by its occasional gory details and a few enjoyably hammy performances.