War and Peace's BBC finale leaves viewers distraught, writer promises adaptation of Les Misérables

Viewers bid an emotional farewell to the Leo Tolstoy adaptation, as it screened its final episode on BBC One.

BBC One's War and Peace adaptation has aired its final episode (BBC)

Probably the world-record breaker for the number of people concurrently crying over Leo Tolstoy, the BBC's adaptation of War and Peace has finally ended. And people are very uncool about that fact.

An outpouring of collective internet grief pooled itself on the airing of the show's final episode, with its cacophony of death, grief and heartbreak. The usual business for Russian literature. 7.2M viewers tuned in on average to the six-part series, with the first-ever extension to a Sunday evening finale being granted for its additional 20 minutes.

The episode surely took advantage of its extended run; killing off six of its characters and leaving viewers ripped to emotional shreds, struggling to say their final goodbyes to the series.

One small piece of consolation: scriptwriter Andrew Davies has promised to return to BBC One with an adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. He'll be bypassing the hit musical to write a songless adaptation crafted directly from the original novel; for if the misery of the literary Russian world was ever to be topped, it'd certainly be by a novel which literally has "miserable" in the title.

"It’s another big epic story and I thinking people will be surprised that there is so much more to it than they maybe realise," Davies told The Telegraph. "It’s an immensely powerful story about appalling levels of poverty and deprivation and how people transcend it, it’s about redemption and revenge and the extraordinary relationship between Jean Valjean and a little girl he brings up."