A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Well, everybody starts an IMDb account for a good reason; mine was the misguided information in the many reviews for this underrated movie... ;)You see, reviews should NOT be about the question "does the movie follow or match up to the original book?" Instead, reviews should purely focus on the question "what is the quality of the movie itself?" The above misunderstanding on itself already explains why 58 out of the 68 reviews (to date July 3rd 2016) are very negative, which not only is a pity but very misleading as well.I watched "The Pillars of the Earth" and give that a 8 out of 10. "World Without End" gets the exact same rating...Both series give the same type of atmosphere, story telling, acting; in all both are excellent done, compliments to the casts and directors. I can highly recommend watching both.Note: in order to compensate a bit for the misleading underrating I rate this one 10 out of 10; just a small contribution from my side to bring the balance in rating back to where it rightfully should be to my personal humble opinion... ;)Have fun watching "World Without End" ;)René

Having just finished reading the novel - I can only say the mini-series World Without End was as total bastardization of Ken Follett's work. The production company had the audacity to put his name on the title shot. I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when he watched the completed series. Despite the poor adaptation to screen - the cast has to be commended. Not too often you get to see a cross-generational mix of actors at one time. And the eye candy didn't hurt either. Several of the themes in the miniseries were well played out but it was still disappointing that integral themes of the novel were either left out or not developed.

It starts in 1327. The old king Edward III loses the civil war to his french Queen Isabella. She installs her son Edward III in as the new king. A knight Sir Thomas escapes after the murdered of the imprisoned former king to the fictional town of Kingsbridge. He seeks sanctuary as a monk. The toad Sir Roland uses his influence with the Queen to take over as Earl of Shiring. He launches a reign of terror condemning Edmund Wooler as well as the old Earl and others to death. Edmund's evil sister Petranilla (Cynthia Nixon) who poisoned Edmund's wife bribes to get Edmund freedom. Edmund's daughter Caris (Charlotte Riley) has the feel for medicine but the backwards world has little use for her except Petranilla is sending her to marry the brutal Elfric Builder. Petranilla's son is the weasel Godwyn (Rupert Evans). Roland spares the lives of the old Earl's sons taking Ralph as his squire while Merthin is given as Elfric Builder's apprentice. There are about twice as many other important characters.It's a maze of characters. This feels like a cheaper version of shows like Game of Thrones without the dragons. It's work to stay on top of every character. Basically the theme is bad things happen to good people. The world is an ugly place and people are ugly, too. It feels very repetitive. The best ugly people has to be Cynthia Nixon and Rupert Evans. That's a crazy mother and son duo. Caris feels a little too modern. She should realize what comes with the world she lives in. She seems to be always shocked at the injustice. Overall, there are good actors in a reasonable mini-series.

While the production quality was excellent and the acting above par (the actors did what they could with the script), this mini-series was a huge disappointment.I was an enormous fan of the previous series ("The Pillars of the Earth")--indeed, enough of a fan to sludge through the tastelessly pretentious and mind-numbingly boring novel afterwards--so I was keen on a sequel series. Alas.Major issues: None of the protagonists had *any power whatsoever* the entire length of the series. None. I understand the whole "rising above the odds" trope that the plot was going for, but this series took it too far. "The Pillars of the Earth" used this trope, but perhaps due to actors with less charisma, or a weaker script, or something else, "World Without End" was simply painful to watch. Even the conclusion was weak--bad guys die in a hurry, hooray. The protagonists are never empowered. The antagonists, of course, are both many and powerful, and even receive the better half of the script.I couldn't cheer for any of the protagonists. One, because they never won anything; and two, because they were hardly given enough character for me to cheer for.You could call this a "sprawling epic," but I would place the emphasis on "sprawling." It overreached itself and fell on its face, sprawled on the muddy floor to be--hopefully--forgotten.