Pillars of the Earth and World without end are such great works it is sad to see what was done to produce a movie. The characters and story are not even close to the book. Standing alone the series was entertaining but it should not even be referenced to the books as it diminishes their greatness.

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

I was intrigued by the first 15 minutes of the first episode, watched the rest and was disappointed. The plot moves so quickly with no character building what soever and the characters are so one dimensional. Caris is married to an abusive man in 30 seconds and then 1 minute later is raped and then he leaves her 2 minutes... and she seems to be unmarred by the horrific events - seriously? The men are either sexually perverse or chivalrous and there seems to be no redeeming quality to anyone that is bad. You either hate them or love them, you cannot be unsure of them. Let's not speak about all the historical inaccuracies. In fairness, the costumes and sets are brilliant and the casting is great. But I couldn't get past the second episode without turning it off.

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.