War and Peace is a BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] Cymru Wales drama production, in partnership with the Weinstein Company and BBC Worldwide/Lookout Point. It was first broadcast on BBC One in January 2016, attracting six million viewers per episode. Although the BBC may be famous for its costume drama adaptations, which have become an intrinsic part of its brand appeal, adapting a giant of Russian and world literature would have been a challenging task. The 2016 adaptation had a lot to prove, after the BBC's previous 1972–3 adaptation of War and Peace, starring Anthony Hopkins, which numbered seventeen episodes. On the big screen, King Vidor's 1956 celebritystudded Hollywood extravaganza and Bondarchuk's 1965–7 Oscar-winning definitive Russian take on War and Peace left emblematic imprints. Producer Julia Stannard and writer Andrew Davies thus had the challenge of entering a busy space of ‘dialogic intertextuality’ (Stam in Burry 2016: 6) and an ongoing symbolic dialogue between various high-profile intertexts.

The chapter uses a limited comparative approach. Bondarchuk's four feature films made in the 1960s have become a key reference point for any Tolstoy adaptation, since they were adapted from inside Russian culture. The BBC‘s 2016 adaptation, on the other hand, takes the viewpoint of an outsider looking into the specificities of Russian culture at a sensitive time in European politics. Bondarchuk's adaptation of War and Peace can thus illuminate and aid the analysis of Davies's adaptation, although the focus must remain on the 2016 television text. Comparisons between adaptations produced for cinema andtelevision respectively, are not new, as Sarah Cardwell attests (2005). She analysed the challenges Davies faced in 2002 when he adapted Doctor Zhivago for the BBC, in the shadow of David Lean's big feature film from 1965. Cardwell expertly moved the analysis between the two adaptations, showing how Davies shifts emphasis in his more modern take for the small screen and makes references to Lean's film and other adaptation sources (Cardwell 2005: 173). ‘I would argue for intertextual criticism as a viable alternative to fidelity criticism’, Cardwell proclaimed (2005: 173), and we have heeded that call.