Watch Thorne: Sleepyhead For Free

Purely Joyful Movie!

Pretty Good

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

DI Tom Thornes (David Morrissey) is haunted by an incident years ago. He investigates victim Alison Willetts who has been left with locked-in syndrome. She was attacked and injected in the back of the neck. She is aware but unable to communicate or move. She is being treated by Dr. Anne Coburn (Natascha McElhone). There has actually been three previous victims. Kevin Tughan (Eddie Marsan) is Thornes' disbelieving boss and pathologist Phil Hendricks (Aidan Gillen) is suspicious.The locked-in syndrome is pretty interesting. I like Alison's interior dialog. It's more compelling than expected. David Morrissey is a great actor. The biggest problem for me is the convenient reveal and connection to Thornes' problem from years ago. It's all too connected and I don't like it. There is no real reason for the connection other than it serves the writing.

"Thorne: Sleepyhead" seems a lot better when you're actually watching it than after you've had a little time to reflect on it. It's still a decent British crime drama, but, a day later, it strikes me as really only deserving of a middling rating. I was especially disappointed by the ending, which was just a variation on an ending that has been done to death in fiction, even though it never actually seems to happen in real life. Even with the holes in the plot, I was impressed by the unusual plot (at least up until the end), which, while certainly grim, connects with a solid emotional punch. If you like British crime productions, this might be worth a shot, but, all things considered, it doesn't rank even close to the best of them.

Just watched the first one of these shown here on local telly.Don't know what it was called and couldn't care anyway.Pretentious garbage. Cut and paste of so many clichés. Average acting with the lead playing his role like a Liam Neeson clone.Not sure what else I can say other than, don't waste your time.Seriously, don't waste your time.This line is just for IMDb.So is this.Well OK, I can say that it also uses those stupid camera sequences where things share and images swap - like a cheap Japanese horror movie. As I said - pretentious.

There is a reason that Mark Billingham's original novel Sleepyhead was such a huge Bestseller when it came out. Watching the TV show version you would be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about. The novel was an ripping edge-of-the-seat page turner with twists and turns that would make your head spin. This is the most unfaithful adaptation imaginable, with terrible writing and clichéd characters and a completely re- written and boring plot. The book does make brief mention of one of DI Thorne's previous cases, a gay serial killer. The TV show decides to expand this mention while simultaneously reducing the story from the book to virtually nothing. The resulting story is a deeply confusing hotchpotch of incongruous ideas and fumbled attempts at carving a new direction. TV SHOW ENDING SPOILER: The killer from the book is completely different to the show with a genius MO missing from the show version. I have little doubt that author Billingham would be mortified at what has been done to his brilliant book and beloved characters.