Acts don't get much harder to follow than Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, but the stunning Kiera Knightly and Hans Matheson certainly look smouldering enough in the new TV adaptation of Boris Pasternak's classic Dr Zhivago.
Knightly, an 18-year-old from Teddington, has already appeared in Star Wars: Episode One as Sabe the decoy queen and in the football movie, Bend It Like Beckham
But the £8 million reworking of the epic love story set against the freezing Russian winter, in which she plays Lara, is by far her biggest role to date.
Her 26-year-old co-star Matheson, who plays the title role, has almost certainly felt more at home during the filming in Slovakia. He is from the chilly Outer Hebrides.
The tale of doomed love became the stuff of cinematic legend in David Lean's 1965 movie which won five Oscars.
But the producers of ITV's new version have already outraged Pasternak's family by introducing "gratuitous" sex scenes and changing the ending.
Anna Pasternak, the author's great-niece, said he would have been "appalled" by what Andrew Davies, who also adapted Pride and Prejudice for television, has done to it.