Watch The Young Visiters For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

I love this movie so much

To me, this movie is perfection.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It is difficult to think of many films with quite so many talented actors. Jim Broadbent, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Simon Russell Beale, Lyndsey Marshal, Anne Reid, Tom Burke - to name but a few. An absolutely delightful film that can be enjoyed as much by adults as by children. Unmissable and wonderfully satirical.

This is the second time Daisy Ashford's famous book has been filmed for UK television. Sadly, this is the less successful version. The whole appeal of the original book was seeing and hearing about the world through the words of a nine year old Victorian girl. Her unique spelling, opinions and ideas - mostly romantic notions about how adults in love behave - make for hilarious reading.This BBC TV production changes much of the original material to suit it's own purposes, which completely obliterates the artless innocence of the book. Worse still, they have actually made up new lines, supposedly in the style of the original book, and yet actually left out many of Daisy's original and memorable lines of dialogue along the way! They have also added new characters and even devised new mis-spellings that Daisy Ashford never included...what a mistake! It's impossible to embellish a piece of work as original as "The Young Visiters" just for the purposes of padding it out into a full length movie...it's a unique piece of work that sprung from the mind of a nine year old girl, and written circa 1890 - what script writer today could possible emulate that with sufficient accuracy?! So, the overall result is a mildly amusing but perplexing comedy of manners with the characters delivering odd speeches and unfathomable mannerisms, and seemingly unable to spell when they write letters to each other. As a TV programme, it just doesn't make the charm of the book come to life.The previous version was made way back in 1984 and seems to have disappeared completely now, it does not seem to be listed under the same title on IMDb...? But it was in fact better than this effort, plus it starred Tracey Ullman, who was hilariously well cast as the pompous Ethel. And the cast got to concentrate much more on the original immortal dialogue, unlike those roped into this mess. None of the humour stands out in the new version, even though it has a stirling cast and a big budget. If you watch this and enjoy it, that's great, but in my opinion the spirit of Daisy Ashford's book has been all but wrung out of it.

Mr Alfred Salteena, "an elderly gentleman of forty-two", an ironmonger by trade, meets a young lady, Miss Ethel Monticue, on a train and promises to introduce her to the royals and nobles of his acquaintance if she comes to stay with him. What he doesn't tell her is that the sum total of his acquaintances is one, Lord Bernard Clark, who lives in a remote castle surrounded by portraits of his ancestors. Alfred engineers an invitation to stay with Lord Clark and Ethel is beside herself with excitement. Alfred soon realises that Bernard is much more the type of man Ethel is looking for, since he is after all a real Lord. Alfred wants to learn to be more suitable, and with Bernard's help, he begins training at Crystal Palace. The training regime is far from easy and some of the funniest and at the same time most poignant scenes are of Alfred's attempts to get it right. Things don't go according to plan, but it all turns out moderately all right in the end. No spoilers here, though. You'll just have to watch the film! The movie is a delight. If you like fairytales with a twist, you will enjoy the wonderful recreations of 9-year-old Daisy Ashford's idea of what the world looks like. And if you're a language person like me, you will be tickled by the dialogue. At 9 years old, Daisy Ashford must have been either an absolute darling or a real pain in the butt! Either way she created some very lovable characters and wrote a gem of a story.

Alfred Salteena is a slightly bumbling gentleman who meets a young lady on a train and invites her to his home in London. She comes to see society and meet young men and bothers him to go out and meet important people. They travel to see Lord Bernard where Alfred realises that he is not `high society' enough to win the beautiful social climber Ethel. Bernard offers to send him to a training school to help gentlemen `improve themselves', while he `entertains' Ethel at his home.Taken from a story written in 1891 by Daisy Ashford when she was a nine year old girl, printed in 1919 and has not been out of print since. I must admit not to have heard of it, but the fact that it has never been out of print shows how good it is. I only know it now from this BBC film and enjoyed the story thoroughly. The writing (from a nine year old!) is great, it shows a great awareness of how important class is in British society and just how subjective and meaningless the whole thing is when it comes down to it. Ethel comes off as quite unpleasant in her desire to climb the social ladder but she is also shown to totally know what she is doing. Again, for a 9 year old to be so aware of the power of a pretty young lady is a frightening thing!The story is told in a comic style and is humorous without taking away from the story. The main material is quite intelligent and very smart and never really lost my interest, being full of witty interactions and fun characters. Part of the reason for this is the cast. Broadbent does the bumbling clown better than most and is a great choice for the role of Alfred. He plays him a little bit foolish and bumbling (`thank you my regal eagle beagle' he says to Prince Charles) but with a heart of gold underneath and a very human heart at that. His tale is not a very happy one but it is quite touching nonetheless. Laurie is given a reasonable role that he fills pretty well. He has moved away from his out and out comic roots and has become more an actor, but he is humorous here as well. Marshall is good but a bit difficult not to dislike when you see her frantically climbing the social ladder no matter what! Nighy plays the Earl and he really hams it up to good effect. He is pretty funny and he helps the material feel a lot lighter even if it could be played as quite dark.Overall this is a nice little film from the BBC. It looks great and feels very polished and professional. It is, at heart, a very good tale that is delivered with high production values and a top notch cast all of whom do good work. I'm not sure how the story was meant, but I think the BBC have lightened it deliberately to be more enjoyable because I think another version could bring out the dark issues of race and social climbing - it might be more interesting but it wouldn't have been as enjoyable as this version!