In this four-part adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic novel, a married woman’s illicit passion leads to social exile and tragedy in Imperial Russia.
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (Helen McCrory), a respected figure in St. Petersburg society, travels to Moscow to save the marriage of her philandering brother, Stiva Oblonsky (Mark Strong). At a railway station, she has a fateful encounter with Count Alexei Vronsky (Kevin McKidd), a dashing cavalry officer. The attraction between them is immediate and powerful, and they soon begin a passionate affair. Anna finds herself torn between her duty to her cold, older husband, Alexei Karenin (Stephen Dillane), and her love for Vronsky. She ultimately chooses passion, abandoning her husband and beloved son to live with her lover, a decision that results in her complete ostracism from the society that once celebrated her. A parallel narrative follows the landowner Konstantin Levin (Douglas Henshall), who struggles with questions of faith and purpose while pursuing the young Princess Kitty (Paloma Baeza).
This four-part serial is a work of fierce compression, stripping Tolstoy’s vast social panorama down to its raw, psychological core. Allan Cubitt’s adaptation dispenses with much of the novel’s political and philosophical discourse to concentrate almost exclusively on the destructive momentum of the central affair. The production functions less as a period romance and more as a claustrophobic tragedy, charting Anna’s emotional and mental collapse with an unflinching gaze. Helen McCrory’s central performance is the key to this approach: intelligent, volatile, and deeply unsentimental, her Anna is a woman fully aware of her choices, driven to ruin not by society alone but by the impossible demands of her own passion.
Broadcast: Channel 4, 4 Episodes, Tuesdays, 9 May – 30 May 2000
Written by: Allan Cubitt
From the novel by: Leo Tolstoy
Director: David Blair
Producer: Matthew Bird
Music: John Keane
Main Cast: Helen McCrory (Anna Karenina), Stephen Dillane (Alexei Karenin), Kevin McKidd (Count Vronsky), Mark Strong (Stiva Oblonsky), Amanda Root (Dolly), Douglas Henshall (Konstantin Levin), Paloma Baeza (Kitty Scherbatskaya), Abigail Cruttenden (Betsy), Paul Rhys (Nikolai)
