Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

ferdinand1932 When Woody Allen cited all the great things in life in the film 'Manhattan', the critic Pauline Kael said that he had assembled a list and not lived. That is a paraphrase but it is true of this pale simpering simulacrum of a biography in this TV series.A writer takes a known form - the biography, and turns it into the legend of scoundrel through the 20th century. Trouble with that is it becomes ironic by necessity as the viewer is already wise to its genre; so to make it interesting it has to be a joke inside another joke.The book may have offered better qualities in narration but in a TV series this is very superficial montage driven sequence of episodes. Sure, it looks lovely, but the middle classes are easily taken in with nice costumes, locations, and people eating food with olive oil and garlic. And it must be about time to have another martini.Unfortunately it's a waste of time. It has moments of emotion which one sees as being close to real but it really fails because it has to move on to the next silly sex, drink, failed novel adventure.Oh well; real life can be just as disappointing, but at least in this series you can have another double of pure grain alcohol to forget about it.

B24 I have not read the story on which the series is based. To the extent that the filmed version aims to represent historical fact in linking fictional characters to real ones, it is successful. Whether the linkage is correct or appropriate is another matter. Some of the filmed elements ring true, while others seem disjointed -- almost as if the scriptwriter intends to play with the viewer's mind. Non-linear storytelling is often like that, aiming for contrivance rather than narrative.Taken strictly as theater on film, it is a highly entertaining piece of work. The camera pursues the protagonist (as played by three different actors) with a compassionate yet critical eye, inviting the viewer to pass judgment on his character by selectively picking out key episodes irrespective of logical development leading to foregone conclusion. This can be a sometimes gut-wrenching experience, not suited to lazy acceptance of questionable motivation on the part of a flawed hero.To put it simply, if there is any moral to the story it pales by comparison to a theme of accidental and ineluctable passages in the life of a minor player on the stage of history, enhanced by backdrops of larger-than-life public figures and horrific events from the twentieth century. Watch it for great acting and superb cinematic design rather than mere pleasure.

paul2001sw-1 There's a section in the memoirs of the philosopher Bertrand Russell where he recalls an unexpected sexual encounter; he writes of it (in among weighty reflections on the meaning of life and the foundations of mathematics) with an almost puerile glee, like a child remembering being locked in the sweet shop. And there was something of the same tone - of baffled exultation, if you like - in a short story by the writer William Boyd, supposedly comprising a portion of the journals of a middle aged man called Logan Mountstewart (note the spelling), recounting a not dissimilar tale. Boyd must have enjoyed writing this, because a few years later he reconstructed the entire life of a renamed Mounstuart, in his novel 'Any Human Heart'. The author gave his character an accidentally interesting life, so that he happens to witness many key stories in 20th century history; but what really gives the book its quality is the believable nature of Logan's narrative voice.As a television drama, it's not nearly so successful. Most obviously, Logan's own words are lost, leaving us the story without the commentary. In its place, tedious flashbacks, and scenes of an elderly Logan reviewing his life, just in case we had forgotten the plot. Secondly, television is a much less imaginative medium, and many drama series set over decades struggle to truly convey the passage of time. 'Our Friends in the North' was one that succeeded; this one does not. The random happenings in Logan's life no longer appear like chance events, retrospectively interesting, in a story driven by its own imperatives, but rather as implausible plot; instead of Logan making acquaintances who transpire to be famous, there's a feeling of shallow name-dropping (here he meets Hemmingway, there the Duchess of Windsor); and coincidences seem contrived when they're all there is. The background of ordinary life, behind which Boyd so successfully disguised his somewhat preposterous tale, is lost. I'm reminded of the disastrous television adaptation of 'A Dance to the Music of Time'; that was worse, as it compressed not one book but thirteen, but there's something of the same problem here. There are also other similarities, in the tale of an aristocratic writer in an where aristocracy is in decline. I didn't see the similarities when I read the book, but they are enhanced not just because of the televisual medium but for other reasons as well: the simplification of the character of Peter Scabius (making him an almost Widmerpool-style figure), and a reluctance to paint the world of Logan's youth in anything other than familiar 'Brideshead'-style colours. Related to the latter, the desire for a certain aesthetic has led the director to cast a stunningly beautiful woman in the role of almost everyone with whom Logan has an affair; the younger Logan is also very dashing, although the older Logan is allowed to age (he still has a final fling, however, with a very pretty French lady, and before that, with an attractive prostitute). While the original character had a messy personal life, there was never the feeling of perpetual glamour one gets when watching this production. To make it worse, we have to be shown Logan having sex with every one of them, an unimaginative and eventually tiresomely repetitive decision. What can be slyly implied in one line of a book becomes an endless succession of sweaty bodies, as if we couldn't be trusted to imagine it for ourselves.This feels like a bitter review. But the book was good. It's become a series that is merely good looking; and sadly, utterly lacking in heart.

info-au-gay William Boyd has shown himself to be one of the finest readers & chroniclers of the Human Condition writing today. It is almost a badge of honour that he has not won an award from one of the product placement companies. My first exposure to his work was a short-story called "The Persistence of Vision" - a perfect gem. Whenever I get depressed with the current offerings in the shops, I revert and, within seconds, I am transported. If I were to say that the life of Logan Mountstuart parallels my own to an almost spooky degree, it is not to say that I have played golf with some HRH & had my matches nicked. I have never jumped from an airplane or worked as a spy. One thing is certain: William Boyd is a far better writer than Ernest Hemingway ever was.Today, like Logan Mountstuart, as I sort out photographs and ancient family papers, I find - often depressing - aspects of that earlier life, the appalling personal loss of a loved one, letters of despair. Here and there a picture drawn by a loved child.As I said, Mountstuart is Everyman. He was not a bold boy; nor a bad man. He was easily led, but he is a good man; honourable, in a way that Peter Scabius was false. And so, Boyd leads us alongside this fallible man; while we, on occasion, find ourselves aching to say to him "Don't!" It would be better to read the book in the first instance; the screenplay follows the same sequence and one is more prepared for the jump-shifts in time. It is what I call a satisfying read; what I would like to write if I had the talent. The acting is universally faithful to the characters, especially Matthew Mac Fadyean, who is utterly convincing & sympathetic. If the producers are going to transfer this to DVD, please keep it intact, as they did in the excellent VHS version of "Armadillo" - which suffered badly in the compressed version, on DVD.It is supremely gratifying to find that there is an audience who can relate to great drama; who have the patience to follow a complex storyline and debate its merits or otherwise. Sunday is going to seem empty when it ends.