Jean Yanne's performance is the only reason for wasting one's time watching (at most the first two parts of) this series. The.anachronistic dialogs and screenplay help turning a psychological study into a grand-guignol melodrama with some sex (through Rachel's character, whose unlikelihood is mitigated by ambiguity in the novel - when is she telling barefaced lies and when is she just twisting the truth? - but who simply becomes a loony erotomaniac in the adaptation), and a historical novel into an insignificant mumbo-jumbo that's not even funny (though Meynestrel, a character inspired by Lenin, is depicted as an hysterical clown).