War and Peace (Season 1)

War and Peace (2016) is a six-part BBC miniseries adapted from Tolstoy's novel by screenwriter Andrew Davies — watch it online on iFILM. Director Tom Harper. Paul Dano plays Pierre Bezukhov, Lily James is Natasha Rostova, and James Norton takes on Prince Andrei Bolkonsky across a story that runs from aristocratic drawing rooms to the wreckage of Borodino.

The adaptation covers Russia from 1805 to 1812. Pierre inherits a fortune he never expected and stumbles through high society without a map. Andrei leaves for war already hollowed out by a marriage that gave him nothing. Natasha arrives in Saint Petersburg as a teenager, open to everything — which makes her exactly the kind of person the world will try to ruin. The three stories wind around each other as Napoleon advances and the certainties of peacetime fall apart.

Davies is the writer behind several of the best British literary adaptations of the past thirty years, and he leans into the character dynamics rather than spectacle — the battle scenes exist, but the camera keeps returning to faces. The supporting cast includes Gillian Anderson, Brian Cox, and Jim Broadbent. This version won't replace Bondarchuk's Soviet epic for scale, but it does something the 1966 film couldn't: it's intimate, and it moves fast enough for viewers who haven't already spent time with the source. Stream War and Peace (2016) online on iFILM.