{"id":313587,"date":"2025-08-03T04:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T04:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/313587\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T04:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T04:04:13","slug":"the-count-of-monte-cristo-review-youll-have-to-pause-every-45-seconds-to-shake-your-head-at-its-daftness-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/313587\/","title":{"rendered":"The Count of Monte Cristo review \u2013 you\u2019ll have to pause every 45 seconds to shake your head at its daftness | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are you ready for some bad, fun TV made from a bad, fun book? Of course you are! It\u2019s high summer and the air is heavy with promise, so come inside, get comfy on the sofa and prepare to binge an eight-episode adaptation of Alexandre Dumas\u2019 ludicrous potboiler The Count of Monte Cristo.<\/p>\n

This series from Greg Latter and Sandro Petraglia stars Sam Claflin (last seen on the small screen being very good as the main man of the sextet in Daisy Jones and the Six<\/a>) as one of the most wronged men in history, Edmond Dant\u00e8s. Gosh, he goes through the mill.<\/p>\n

As do we. The two episodes available for review (there was a third, but the site kept crashing \u2013 possibly for my own protection) are extraordinary. The plot is simple enough. Wild, of course \u2013 that is what keeps you turning the 1,300 or so pages of the book \u2013 but straightforward once you realise that la credibilit\u00e9 is not an overarching concern.<\/p>\n

We are in France in 1815, just as Napoleon is escaping Elba and looking forward to his brief return to power. Meanwhile, our man Dant\u00e8s annoys a fellow sailor, Danglars (Blake Ritson), by being promoted to captain over him. I suspect a lifetime of jokes about his name have rendered Danglars overly touchy, but it proves to be very bad luck for our hero. Because Dant\u00e8s also narks a man called Fernand Mondego (Harry Taurasi) by sweeping his cousin Merc\u00e9d\u00e8s (Ana Girardot) off her feet when Fernand was quite looking forward to doing so himself. Danglars and Fernand duly get together to frame Dant\u00e8s for treason. Thanks to the self-interest and corruption of Marseille\u2019s deputy prosecutor, G\u00e9rard de Villefort (Mikkel Boe F\u00f8lsgaard), they succeed.<\/p>\n

Before you can say: \u201cWhat a trio of dirty dogs!\u201d Dant\u00e8s is chucked into a carriage and then into a cell on an island fortress, where he moulders away for 10 years with nothing but the maggots in his gruel for company. The crushing despair a man would feel, pushing him to the brink of madness and beyond is conveyed by putting Claflin in a terrible long wig.<\/p>\n

But then! He hears a tapping from the other side of his cell wall. It is the sound of Abb\u00e9 Faria, played by Jeremy Irons<\/a>, breaking through. The abbot shares his education and escape plan with his new best mate and they spend the next five years chipping away at the stones and mortar lying between them and freedom. Faria also works out just what dirty doggery has taken place and gives Dant\u00e8s a raging thirst for vengeance, albeit one that he cannot slake until he is out of Chateau Maggotes.<\/p>\n

Alas, just as they are about to flee, the abbot has a stroke, leaving him with the strength only to give a 40-minute monologue about the origins and meaning of a scrap of parchment in his ragged pocket. It shows the location of treasure buried on the island of Monte Cristo; he bequeaths it to Dant\u00e8s before carking it. Dant\u00e8s puts the corpse in his own bed, sews himself into Faria\u2019s body bag and gets himself thrown off the battlements and into the sea. Libert\u00e9!<\/p>\n

There are two problems. Un, we are but a quarter of the way through this and we still have so much to cover \u2013 finding the treasure, becoming the count, fooling Parisian high society, some murders, some currency manipulations, at least one duel, some poisoning, blackmail, embezzlement and assorted other shenanigans. I fear that either the story must have been slashed to ribbons or that we will have to hurtle through at such a speed that it becomes incomprehensible.<\/p>\n

Incoherence already threatens, because of probl\u00e8me deux: the script. The Count of Monte Cristo requires you to pause it every 45 seconds or so to shake your head at needless utterances such as: \u201cIf we can\u2019t get through this storm, we\u2019ll perish.\u201d Some of it is truly unbelievable. Did Dant\u00e8s really just say: \u2018I\u2019d like to add two hours a day to my digging,\u2019 to his abbot friend? Did the abbot honestly ask, in wonderment at the sight of a watch Merc\u00e9d\u00e8s had given Dant\u00e8s: \u201cAnd you\u2019ve kept it all this time?\u201d Yes, of course! What was he going to do? Lose it somewhere in his teeny tiny cell? Give it to a mouse? Chuck it out the window in a sudden passion for minimalism? (A high proportion of the performances are terrible, too, but let\u2019s be kind and blame most of that on the instructions the actors have been given.)<\/p>\n

There are enough of these howling absurdities to hobble the pacing, which needs to be fast and furious to cover Dumas\u2019 own, and to prevent the viewer from making any investment in the characters. But their stupidity brings a joy of its own. When the tech gremlins decide I am ready, I look forward to many more episodes.<\/p>\n

The Count of Monte Cristo aired on U&Drama<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are you ready for some bad, fun TV made from a bad, fun book? Of course you are!…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-313587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114962855810797505","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}