The Count of Monte Cristo review – you'll have to pause every 45 seconds to shake your head at its daftness

The Guardian

4 days ago

Are you ready for some bad, fun TV made from a bad, fun book? Of course you are! It's 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' ludicrous potboiler The Count of Monte Cristo.
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) as one of the most wronged men in history, Edmond Dantès. Gosh, he goes through the mill.
As do we. The two episodes available for review (there was a third, but the site kept crashing – possibly for my own protection) are extraordinary. The plot is simple enough. Wild, of course – that is what keeps you turning the 1,300 or so pages of the book – but straightforward once you realise that la credibilité is not an overarching concern.
We are in France in 1815, just as Napoleon is escaping Elba and looking forward to his brief return to power. Meanwhile, our man Dantès 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 Dantès also narks a man called Fernand Mondego (Harry Taurasi) by sweeping his cousin Mercédès (Ana Girardot) off her feet when Fernand was quite looking forward to doing so himself. Danglars and Fernand duly get together to frame Dantès for treason. Thanks to the self-interest and corruption of Marseille's deputy prosecutor, Gérard de Villefort (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), they succeed.
Before you can say: 'What a trio of dirty dogs!' Dantès 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.
But then! He hears a tapping from the other side of his cell wall. It is the sound of Abbé Faria, played by Jeremy Irons, 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 Dantès a raging thirst for vengeance, albeit one that he cannot slake until he is out of Chateau Maggotes.
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 Dantès before carking it. Dantès puts the corpse in his own bed, sews himself into Faria's body bag and gets himself thrown off the battlements and into the sea. Liberté!
There are two problems. Un, we are but a quarter of the way through this and we still have so much to cover – 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.
Incoherence already threatens, because of problème 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: 'If we can't get through this storm, we'll perish.' Some of it is truly unbelievable. Did Dantès really just say: 'I'd like to add two hours a day to my digging,' to his abbot friend? Did the abbot honestly ask, in wonderment at the sight of a watch Mercédès had given Dantès: 'And you've kept it all this time?' 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's be kind and blame most of that on the instructions the actors have been given.)
There are enough of these howling absurdities to hobble the pacing, which needs to be fast and furious to cover Dumas' 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.
The Count of Monte Cristo aired on U&Drama