How much worse it must have been for people having to take in great gusts of sometimes intricate, convoluted and lengthy dialogue? I really can't recommend this at all. They whizzed by, but even I could tell that not all was being translated. I don't speak Russian so I watched with subtitles. However, working against such deficiencies they were struggling. It's not a Shakespeare play that they are filming and thus have to remain true to the text, it's a novel whose internal logic and conventions are completely different to those of screen or stage. What is acceptable, nay riveting, on the page is verbose and unconvincing on the screen. Unfortunately, these seem to have been lifted from the book and grafted onto the programme. The book is driven by it and often the characters have long, involved conversations. The most abject let-down was in the dialogue. It was vanishingly unlikely that any director would have been able to convey properly the social, political and emotional currents of those complex and volatile times so the slavish adherence to the book meant that the whole TV project would be a failure unless it had been adapted for modern audiences while retaining and explaining the themes and background. But the series is 'based on' rather than an 'adaptation of'. Completed in 1872, Demons is rivaled only by The Brothers Karamazov for the place of Dostoevskys greatest work. The sets are magnificent and are the sole reason I have given three stars. The novel was a cry against and riposte to the fashionable nihilistic and Western tendencies of the times that were taking hold of some of the privileged Russian youth. The wonderful book, one of the best novels ever to have been written, was done a disservice by this mini series.

Evil spirits dostoevsky