Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

one of my absolute favorites!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This series was disappointing for me. I saw Pillars of the Earth which was very good and so I was expecting something better.I didn't give this series a one-star rating because the costumes were very well-made and some of the cast like Miranda Richardson, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Nora von Waldstätten performed very well.But there were too many rape scenes, and I didn't like the incest. Is it really necessary to show incest in so many TV series? The anti-Catholic theme (lesbian nuns, gay monks, evil prior, executing healers, old priest draining blood) was over-the-top. In reality, most at that time in history were very religious and their behaviour was influenced by the fear of eternal hell-fire.People were unrealistically naive and too easily fooled by Godwyn and his mother as they kept on murdering people, episode after episode. I was disappointed in the then age 14 Edward III being cast as an age 33 actor in the first episode. Later we do not see his beautiful wife, and first-born son, just his third child Joan. The old queen mother had no power after 1330, yet we see her and Joan trying to manipulate Edward into going to war with France. Edward III is cast as an indecisive, wimpish, dark-haired little man, but was in fact very confident, tall, broad-shouldered and fair-haired (a typical Plantagenet in appearance). Edward III has been one of my favourite people in history since I first read about him as child, so I was unhappy to see him portrayed this way. Was that battle in France supposed to be the Battle of Crécy? It happened nothing like what is shown! In fact, the French in far superior numbers attacked with crossbowmen and mounted knights, and were slaughtered by the longbows. Where is Edward's son the Black Prince? He was just a 16-year-old at Crécy, yet did very well in the midst of the heaviest fighting. There is plenty of interesting drama in real history during that time period, like the story of how Edward took Calais. But of course the producers decided to ignore that.

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

First off, I read the book which was okay but a bit repetitive of Pillars of the Earth. I was really looking forward to this series but ended up massively disappointed by it instead.Cynthia Nixon should go back to Sex and the City because her performance was 100% rubbish. God, if I saw her "I have a cunning plan" expression once I saw it a thousand times. She couldn't do anything with the character. Not that the rest of the cast were 1000 times better. Peter Firth was the only one who did well and Gwenda at least seemed interesting but neither were given enough time or breathing space to grow more.On top of that, some things are just implausible. Like how does Mother Cecilia get to be head of the nunnery and the town without learning how to spot and understand troublemakers like Godwyn. Politics, as Prior Philip understood, is part of being a leader of any description. Plus there is Gwenda, forcefully called "the Saxon" as if the writers were so lacking in confidence in this show that they hitched it "Pillars". Sort of "wink wink nudge nudge you remember Ellen don't you". Incidentally, the series creators lack of confidence is something that is obvious all the way though the 8 episodes.Another issue was its out and out invasion of history. Where Pillars would have local and town leaders meet with historical figures, this was possible because Kingsbridge was near places those people would conduct their business. Finesse, in other words. World without End pulls history around to have the likes of King Edward III give inordinate attention to, and finally launch an all out war against, Kingsbridge when he's only just begun invading France. I mean they have him specifically say Kingsbridge.There are other things too. Like how, when the plague strikes, does the character of Merthin know about "quarantine". He actually says quarantine. I'm pretty sure that wasn't invented until decades even centuries later. Or how the appearance of the statue of the Madonna changes so radically between Pillars and World without End without any of the people noticing or caring. Surely they must have realised at some point that (A) the statue was fake and (B) they weren't real miracles.The Bridge collapse was utter rubbish. Half the people looked like they were jumping off. Also, I just couldn't buy that falling off a crappy little bridge like that one would kill such a number of people as to be worthy of being called a major disaster.The way King Edward II was treated, as in the news of his "death" in the first episode, was stupid. It treated like freaking water cooler gossip or a scene from Eastenders or Coronation Street. For Gods sake, if a King back then died in mysterious circumstances, lords and peasants alike would be shitting themselves because more than likely a major war would break out.All in all, a very poor show and a slur on the fine work that was "Pillars of the Earth", both the book and the series.

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.