Franchises beg for adaptation. Especially ones with the staying power of the Dune saga, Frank Herbert's monumental work about royal intrigue, power politics, mysticism, environmentalism and other big questions as only classic science fiction can deliver. There have been other adaptations in the works and others that have been made. This one was the product of the Scifi Channel in 2000, and for me, surprisingly, it did quite a job.
David Lynch's Dune suffered from the director's propensity towards the strange, the abstract and the metaphysical. On the surface, they would be a perfect match, but Lynch could not refrain from being weird for weird's sake. But for all it's flaws, Lynch's Dune was poetic, meditative and for the most part, captured Herbert's universe recognizably.
For a Scifi Channel production, their Dune mini-series, starring William Hurt as Duke Leto Atredeis, had more time to adapt Herbert's sprawling novel. And it took advantage of that. Characters that got short changed in Lynch's version, most notably Feyd, got their just deserts in Skiffy's production. They also kept the abilities of the Bene Gesserite, especially The Voice, more on the lines of what the book actually depicted, rather than some Weirding Way elements that Lynch pulled out of his backside for his version.
Also, in this version, the Fremen seemed like actual desert people in their look and manners, rather than Europeans. Stilgar and Chani especially were much better rendered. The actress who played Chani, btw, Barbora Kodetova, a Czech, really pulled off her character well (and was quite lovely topless).
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