To read a book is one thing, to watch it brought to life on either the small or big screen is another, but there’s a good chance that Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth will be done justice as it is a four part series, which is running on Sundays on TV3.

The weekly two-hour dramatisation of this medieval saga isn’t bad but it’s possible that a lot of it would have gone over my head if I hadn’t read the book.

Set in the time of Henry I in England where anarchy breaks out when the King’s heir (a legitimate one that is) is drowned after coming home from a war in France, what does come across from the first two instalments in this short four-week series, is the conflict between Church and Monarchy, though the Church come across as the more scheming and underhanded and will stop at nothing to gain power.
 

While the book also explores that, it is also a history of how small holdings became towns and eventually cities, thanks mostly to markets and the natural wealth of environs, such as quarries and forests for instance.

It also concentrates on the building of cathedrals and palaces and believe me, the details of masonry that was in Follett’s book can probably never be transferred successfully to the screen, but obviously the human story is more interesting for the screen.

Medieval times were certainly gory times with torture, bloody wars where armies fought mostly on foot or on horses and where marriages were made to merge power and wealth. Romance and love were unimportant and rarely did couples marry of their own free will, unless they were poor, which meant it didn’t matter who they married.

It has a stellar cast with Ian McShane as a baddie Bishop (and he gets worse), Donald Sutherland putting in a short lived performance in the first two episodes, and Sarah Parish (one of the Mistresses cast) as a brilliant scheming mother.

Watching the series is hardly going to substitute for reading the book, which is a terrific family saga as well as having an historical and sociological value. And it’s also a rocking good read.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.