War and Peace Episode 5 will feature a lot of bloodshed

BBC's TV adaptation of War and Peace will have a lot of bloodshed in Episode 5 to be aired on Sunday, 31 January. It is being billed as the most 'blood-soaked battle' ever shown on British TV. During the Battle of Borodino, there will be some gory scenes in a six-minute sequence.

The scenes will include amputations, facial injuries and butchered bodies, as the fate of key characters, especially Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, hangs in the balance, says the Daily mail.

Tom Harper, director of the show, says the Napoleonic War was one of the deadliest and the makers wanted to convey its intensity to an audience brought up on Hollywood fare such as Saving Private Ryan and Fury.

"Borodino was a particularly bloody battle and we didn't want to shy away from that or glamorise the reality of it," he says "These battles were horrendous, just horrendous. What cannonball and grapeshot did to people in terms of ripping them apart was just awful."

Besides, Leo Tolstoy was anti-war having had his own battlefield experience. Because of this, his descriptions in the book "go even further than we do on screen", Harper points out.

"Those early TV versions were amazing and good reference points, but we are telling the story for 2016. Storytelling for TV and for the screen have evolved and, while those scenes were incredibly impressive, an audience which has seen Saving Private Ryan or Fury expects something different," he adds.

The TV adaptation had drawn criticism for intimate and incestuous scenes, but the show has become a big hit.