War and Peace: screenwriter admits he sexed up BBC adaptation, included incest storyline

'Occasionally I have written one or two things that Tolstoy forgot to write'

War & Peace - Prince Andrei (Mitch Jenkins)

The screenwriter behind the BBC's newest adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic War and Peace, Andrew Davies, has admitted to sexing up the tome for television audiences. 

Davies, responsible also for the BBC's famous Pride and Prejudice series, including that certain 'emerging-from-a-lake' scene, recently spoke to the Telegraph on adapting for television Tolstoy's sprawling tale of five aristocratic Russian families caught up in the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. 

He joked the task actually turned out to be "dead easy"; adding, "I haven’t felt any need to change War and Peace. Occasionally I have written one or two things that Tolstoy forgot to write."

When asked whether those things referred to the series' new sex scenes he answered, "He just didn't actually write the scenes and I couldn't see why. So I thought I would."

Davies has thus elaborated on a very brief reference to Boris (Aneurin Barnard) and Hélène Kuragin, then Countess Bezukhov (Tuppence Middleton), becoming lovers; evolving the union into a full-blown affair, "Well I thought that would make several little scenes: how it started, what happened in the middle, and how she gets rid of him in the end. And so that's something to look forward to in later episodes."

Controversially, the new material also involves an explicit, incestuous relationship between the reckless sibling pair, Anatole (Callum Turner) and Hélène Kuragin; featuring a sex scene between the two in the very first episode of the series. When questioned on its inclusion Davies stated, "It's subtly referenced in the book, absolutely."



However, academics have expressed outrage at the inclusion of such incest; Tolstoy scholar Andrew Kaufman stating, "That has absolutely no justification in the text. It just doesn't exist in it. I think they may be imposing a 21st Century perspective on to a 19th Century novel. What Tolstoy is playing with in a very muted way is the fact that they have immoral values.”

Famed historian Simon Schama, who's read the book eight times, agrees, "It is true the siblings have a complicated relationship. But the idea of a gratuitous bedroom scene is totally inappropriate.”

Granted, Davis isn't entirely grasping at straws here. Many have read allusions of an incestuous relationship in Tolstoy's descriptions of the pair, with the author even reportedly editing out further, more explicit references to such. Yet, there's a reason those allusions remain subtly so; forming part of the narrative fabric of the 19th century's suffocating, aristocratic society, plagued by constant fears of rife immorality amongst its inhabitants. Even if they were not explicitly incestuous; the pair's unhealthy relationship and extravagant lifestyle would certainly have led most of their acquaintances to believe them capable of it. 

Sure, there's no skating around the fact War and Peace's 1,400 pages make it an intimidating piece of literature; dry at best, simply unmanageable to many. A 21st-century adaptation bears the responsibility of re-addressing the book's context for the concerns of a new age, but doing through so sex seems like a cheap shot. 

The show stars Lily James, Paul Dano, James Norton, Jim Broadbent, Brian Cox, and Gillian Anderson. The first episode of the six-part series airs on BBC One on 3 January at 9pm.