Just perfect...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Whether this is better than other dramatizations of the book is irrelevant. If it's bad, it's bad--and this is bad. The fact that this version covers far more of the book--including Kostya Levin's story, which I think is more interesting than Anna's--just makes its atrocities even more unbearable.What bothered me much more than its distortions of the book's characters and deviations from its plot is its dragging THE WHOLE BOOK down to the level of a soap opera. From the very first scene with Countess Vronskaya and Anna on the train, and in every single following scene, all the way through to the end, I felt like I was watching As The Word Turns--all 13,858 episodes. It made me sick.To me, one of Tolstoy's most astonishing achievements in this book is that it NEVER--not for one scene or one paragraph or one word--falls into melodrama. Every character is alive and real, everything they do is believable and organic. Nothing is overblown or contrived.This production is the exact opposite. EVERYTHING is overblown, EVERYTHING feels contrived and phony and stupid. It takes a very great book and turns it into cheap melodrama. What a disgrace.

I just saw the mini-series and enjoyed it so much. Yes, it was filmed in the 70s so perhaps it might be dated in its production values, but in its performances and dialogue and sheer emotional highs and lows, it is far superior to any of the other Anna Kareninas I have seen. Nicola Paget was simply smashing - you might remember her as the actress who brought Elizabeth Bellamy so vividly to life in Upstairs, Downstairs. She will simply break your heart with her portrayal of Anna. And Count Vronsky is played by the dashing Stuart Wilson, who looks every bit the part of a man a woman would give up so much for. I fell in love with this actor when he played Fernando Lopez in The Pallisers, another marvelous 70s miniseries. The trio of superb performances includes Eric Porter as Anna's rigid and emotionally devastated husband, who is hiss-worthy in many scenes, yet manages to convey the emotions boiling inside of him, giving one pause to totally hate him. Eric Porter was the marvelous Soames Forsyte in the 1967 series The Forsyte Saga, simply one of the best mini-series ever presented on television. I gave this ten stars, because when I am watching a novel by Tolstoy adapted for television, I want to see the emotions of the novel brought to life, more than I care about the settings. The entire cast is excellent, with nary a badly cast role. I had rented the series, but now have ordered it so that I can watch it again, in its entirety, whenever I please.

I have a poor VHS copy of the series from when it was shown on PBS in 1984. I have searched for years to locate a clean copy. It is worth viewing over and over again--the acting is tremendous.The costuming and sets are great, and the series is true to the text and atmosphere of the original novel.I recommend it to anyone, but for some reason it has not been issued or reissued in the market. BBC has reissued most of its major series in VHS or DVD. I hope that this will be the case for this great series.This is a timeless story that is absolutely fundamental to an understanding or consideration of what it is like to live our lives out even with all the pitfalls and joys.

I remember seeing this version of "Anna Karenina" on PBS when it was re- broadcast in the late 1980s. I actually taped the entire series on Beta video tape, but haven't checked at all recently to see if the tapes are still viable. I was deeply impressed with the production values of "Anna,' including the choice of filming locations, acting, costumes, and use of music. (I particularly remember the use of a lot of Tchaikovsky.)I've always wondered why this magnificent production hasn't been re-issued on video or DVD. I for one would buy it in a heartbeat. Short of that, I should get my Betamax repaired and transfer the tapes to VHS, DVD, or VCD for my own use.10/10