The Count of Monte Cristo, on PBS

Many people say living well is the best revenge. Edmond Dantes is not one of them. That is too bad for him, because he could live quite nicely on his newfound fortune. It is also too bad for the three French rats who did him dirty. Dantes will have his revenge, served as cold as possible. Unlike the recent French film, series director Billie August and adaptation co-writers Sandro Petraglia & Greg Latter lean more into the novel’s tragedy than its swashbuckling throughout the eight episodes of the new The Count of Monte Cristo, which premieres tomorrow night on PBS.

Dantes is blessed with a beautiful fiancée, Mercedes Herrera, and a supporting boss, Pierre Morel, the owner of his merchant vessel. Unfortunately, he is also cursed with two scummy rivals. Fernand Mondego, the future Count de Morcerf, covets Herrera’s hand in marriage, while Danglars resents Morel promoting Dantes above him. Out of spite, they falsely denounce Dantes as a Bonapartist agent. Initially, the local prosecutor, Gerard Villefort sees through their deception. However, he consigns innocent Dantes to the notorious Chateau d’If prison to coverup his late captain’s involvement Villefort’s Bonapartist father.

During his fifteen years of confinement, Dantes is erroneously reported dead to the outside world. Subsequently, Herrera reluctantly marries Mondego, who ascends to the French senate after a checkered military career. Danglars also finds wealth and a title in Parisian finance, while Villefort becomes one of the top national prosecutors.

Dantes also stays busy, befriending the heretical Abbe Faria, who schools the sailor on all the social graces a proper gentleman should know, as they painstakingly prepare their escape. He also informs Dantes of the location of a fabulous cache of secret treasure hidden on the uninhabited isle of Monte Cristo.

Petraglia and Latter follow Dumas reasonably closely, but their adaptation takes explicit inspiration from the Chinese proverb: “those who seek revenge, should first dig two graves.” In fact, they paraphrase it on multiple occasions. Not surprisingly, that gives this Monte Cristo a distinctly dark hue.

Unlike Pierre Niney in the recent French film, Sam Claflin never crosses swords with any of his sworn enemies. However, he broods harder than a diamond. Weirdly, the tall, bearded Claflin also bears an ironically distracting resemblance to Joel McHale. However, the facial hair helps explain why nobody recognizes Dantes, at least to an extent.

Regardless, you have to respect the sheer seething bile Claflin projects throughout the series. Michele Riondino and Lino Guanciale are also both roguishly charismatic as Dantes’ allies, Jacopo the fisherman and Vampa, the former bandit. Plus, the great Jeremy Irons perfectly personifies the Abbe’s learned fatalism.

Lazarus, on Prime Video

Dr. Joel "Laz" Lazarus is seeing ghosts, but at least they shouldn’t linger longer than fifty minutes. Apparently, he is experiencing visions, or something, from his late father’s life. Dr. Jonathan Lazarus was also a shrink, but his office was clearly not a safe space. Some of the sessions were rather intense, but they might help Laz identify his father’s killer, since his ghost can’t, or won’t explain directly. Regardless, each visit to his late father’s office brings new questions and often further family angst in Harlan Coben & Daniel Brocklehurst’s six-episode Lazarus, which premiers today on Prime Video.

Old Man Lazarus was supremely self-confident and he never owned a gun, so Laz considers his supposed suicide highly unlikely. However, everyone knows the senior Lazarus took the childhood murder of his daughter Sutton especially hard, because she was his favorite. Of course, the cops know all about Sutton’s murder, especially since DI Alison Brown is an old friend of the late doctor and DS Seth McGovern is the other Dr. Lazarus’s childhood buddy. In fact, McGovern still carries a torch for Laz’s other younger sister, Jenna, a psychic, who is quite offended that the ghosts come to Laz instead of her.

It works differently for old man Lazarus, who just walks up to Laz to start another conversation from beyond the grave. Yet, in most cases, Laz takes his father’s place in conversations from the past, experiencing them through his eyes. Frankly, the first time it happens, he simply assumes he is talking to a patient who is too crazy to tell him from his father. However, he soon learns Cassandra Rhodes is dead—murdered in fact.

Frankly, Laz is probably a little too confiding about the ghost business, especially to McGovern. Of course, he will eventually need some kind of reason to explain finding a corpse that has been hidden for over a decade. Meanwhile, Sam Olsen, the original suspect in Sutton’s disappearance makes a suspicious habit of walking around the late Dr. Lazarus’s office at all hours of the night.

Lazarus is not exactly horror per se, but it has enough of the supernatural and uncanny to feel appropriately atmospheric for October viewing. Frankly, the first five episodes are addictively bingeable. Coben and Brocklehurst dexterously dangle a juicy new cliffhanger-revelation at the end of each episode. Unfortunately, the concluding sixth installment plays out like it was conceived to disappoint, if not outright enrage, everyone who invested nearly fives hours of their lives in the Lazarus kin.

Frankly, five out six is not bad, especially for an anthology, but a weak dismount definitely hurts a thriller like Lazarus. Still, Sam Claflin delivers some of the best work of his career as poor Laz, whom Coben and Brocklehurst truly put through an emotional wringer. Each episode he has multiple freakouts, breakdowns, and existential crises.

Journey’s End: R.C. Sherriff’s Classic Drama, Back on the Big Screen

R.C. Sherriff’s classic stage play was such a definitive depiction of WWI, Heinz Paul opted to maintain the characters’ Britishness for his 1931 German language film production. Ironically, it would be Aces High, a 1976 Franco-British co-pro that took the most liberties, shifting the drama from the trenches to a fighter squadron. This time around, director Saul Dibb and screenwriter Simon Reade closely follow the original text with their faithful yet still powerful adaptation of Journey’s End (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Hopelessly naïve with respect to the war, 2^nd Lt. Raleigh manages to get himself assigned to the infantry company of Captain Stanhope, his senior at school and his sister’s romantic interest. Unfortunately, the war has taken a drastic emotional toll on Stanhope, who now regularly self-medicates with whiskey. Nevertheless, his is still the best trench-level officer in the British Army.

With the launch of what would be known as the Spring Offensive imminent, Raleigh’s timing is downright perverse. In fact, Stanhope bitterly resents his presence, fearing Raleigh will inform his sister of his post-traumatic condition and that Raleigh’s blind hero-worship will lead to his death. The latter concern becomes especially pressing when Stanhope’s superiors order him to dispatch Raleigh and the beloved second-in-command, Lt. “Uncle” Osborne on a dubious daytime raid.

Dibb opens up the drama just a bit, giving viewers a sense of the intricacies of the trenches, but he retains the feeling of airless claustrophobia. Just being there looks like a miserable experience, so it is easy to see how the added tension of the anticipated German attack would try men’s souls. The film itself feels more than sufficiently realistic, but Dibb is also clearly attuned to the institutionalized class differences between officers and the enlisted.

Sam Claflin is terrific and almost terrifyingly intense as Stanhope. It is an achingly brittle performance that actually pairs up nicely with his work in Their Finest, which is tonally quite different, yet shares some overlapping themes. Likewise, Paul Bettany really gives the film depth and soul with his humanistic portrayal of Osborne. Much like he did in Zoo, Toby Jones finds his opportunities to inject pathos and dignity into Mason the cook, who might otherwise be a stock character cliché in someone else’s hands. Frankly, the maturation and disillusionment of Asa Butterfield’s Raleigh seems a bit slow, but his character is really just there to serve as a foil and mirror to Stanhope.

It is nice to see Dibb finally get another film released in American theaters after the Weinsteins dithered away his quality adaptation of Suite Française. This is an even better film that captures the horrifying futility of war without indulging in graphic gore. Highly recommended, Journey’s End opens today (3/16) in New York, at the Landmark 57.