He considers the theatrical version of Fanny and Alexander an amputated version of what his original film was, and he doesn't really like the shorter film.

I was mostly interested in it as a theatrical film. Personally, I am not so interested in television, simply because I don't watch television myself. I'm into movies.

I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film. But we couldn't finance it only through theatrical release, we couldn't get all the money we needed. We had to get some money from television. So we said, ok, let's do it both ways. So we did it in four parts.

It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn't even read the book. So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I'd certainly like to do it.

The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics.

We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways with slightly different bits of dialogue and information, so that later on, we could cut the piece more easily and it would still feel complete, even though it was shorter.