The novel of Noble House is one of the most detailed and riveting books you could ever want to read......which is a problem when you want to distill a 1000+ page novel into a movie or mini-series. These guys pulled it off though, using a very truncated version of the story.......and while this was made before War and Remembrance killed off the epic network mini-series, it was probably too expensive to make it much longer.
The cast is letter perfect though, especially if you're a fan of the books. Once you see them on screen you can't imagine anyone else in these roles, even if you re-read the books after viewing the series. Pierce Brosnan, by and large one of the few recognizable names to most American viewers, just inhales Ian Dunross, and John Rhys-Davies (who is now much more famous than he was then) is one of the great villains of all time as Quillan Gornt. Deborah Raffin and Ben Masters, who play the Americans Casey Tcholak and Linc Bartlett, are names I wasn't familiar with, but they give such true performances that I'm disappointed that they didn't get more of a bounce off of this. The other supporting parts were done very well, and added to the atmosphere.
The only thing that I don't like about the mini-series is that its not out on DVD yet, even with Pierce being so much more famous now than then. It'll come though, and I'll be first in line when it does.
Oh yeah, it's worth noting that in a way the mini-series on network TV has come back, they just call them regular series such as 24 and Lost.
