Wonderful character development!

Beautiful, moving film.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

My background vis-a-vis this mini-series: I read both books, each when they were new, and liked them. I watched "The Pillars of the Earth" on Blu-ray, and liked it. It was not as good as the books, but enjoyable given that it was, in the end, a TV show.World Without End is just plain awful. I thought about how to capture its horribleness, and decided I could not do it justice. Instead, I will only say I give you my solemn word that this is bad. Save your money and your time, and avoid!!!

Really! The first 15 minutes of the movie were such an egregious deviation from the original plot that I knew it would only go downhill from there. Where do I start? First let's start with the ages of Ralph, Mervin, Caris & Gwenda and the lack of the latter 2 characters from one the most important plots of the book which sets the stage for the character's future behavior. The introduction of Sir Thomas with his secret message & how that took place in the book with his intimate interaction with Mervin. Mattie showing up at the monastery taking over Sir Thomas' medical procedure...not only is it so far off the plot but also from reality. Women wouldn't have been allowed to barge in & take charge like that during that time period. The nuns that served as nurses barely had a say.

This feature may have been close to reality in terms of the brutal nature of these dark times, but sometimes it was very difficult to watch. One of the most disappointing aspects of the story were the inability of some of the characters (Ralph, Godwyn for example) never came around. I had hopes that they would somehow change, but they started evil and remained so - and maybe that's typical of these times, but the lines between good and evil were so clearly drawn. Throughout the whole series, there's this great sense of impending doom comes about with the abuse of power by the Queen, the would be King, the Bishop and the Earl. There's a sense of hopelessness that nothing good can come of all this. The ending just gives a brief sense of hope, but it's not fleshed out at all. In general it's a very dark depiction of that ancient time. i only watched all the way to the end to see if there was a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.

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.