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the audience applauded

Thanks for the memories!

As Good As It Gets

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

When this series first aired in 1992 it was considered rather racy due to the characters' unconventional attitude to sex and the handful of nude scenes now it seems far less shocking. The story is told in flashback as the characters head to a funeral in west Cornwall. On the way they reminisce about their time together around the time of the Second World War. We are introduced to them as they enjoy one last summer together in Cornwall before the war. Once the war starts Polly and Calypso head to London and young Sophy is sent to a boarding school. Their love lives are unconventional to say the least Calypso is determined to marry a rich man but when she does she is more than happy to take other lovers, Polly can't decide which twin she wants to be with so has both and Helena has an affair with Jewish refugee Max while her husband Richard is left with Max's wife.This might sound like the plot from a particularly melodramatic soap opera but thankfully it doesn't feel like that due to the excellent acting from Felicity Kendal, Tara Fitzgerald, Jennifer Ehle and Rebecca Hall as Helena, Polly, Calypso and Sophy and Paul Eddington as Richard. As it is set during the war there is a constant feeling that characters could die and at least one is killed, although we obviously know that certain characters will survive as we have seen them in the present. I liked how the story was presented in flashback as the surviving characters told their story to the next generation on the way to the funeral; this somehow gave it a greater degree of believability perhaps because their reaction to hearing the story mirrored the viewers.

The Camomile Lawn is one of my favorite British TV adaptations. It's based on a book by Mary Wesley, and was first shown in 1992. The director is Sir Peter Hall who founded both the National Theatre and the RSC. There are five episodes and it's compulsive viewing. It's a family drama set during the early years of World War II. In the last episode the characters meet at a funeral thirty years later, giving it similarities to the Big Chill. The main characters are seven cousins / friends who spend part of their summers in Cornwall at the home of Aunt Helena (Felicity Kendall) and Uncle Richard (Paul Eddington). The story begins in August 1939, before the Germans invade Poland. The friends, are mostly 18 or 19 and join the war effort when war is declared. The action then moves to London during the Blitz. The young cast all have an abundance of energy and charisma, especially Jennifer Ehle (Young Calypso), Tara Fitzgerald (Young Polly)and Rebecca Hall (Young Sophy). Philip Larkin famously said that sexual intercourse began in 1963, but he needed to get out more. With death all around them, the lead characters live for today and take a hedonistic approach to sex and booze. As the older Polly says (Virginia McKenna) "it was a happy time." Mary Wesley creates strong female characters who all seem wise, pragmatic and fun. The men mostly seem flawed and weak in some way. They are either dim-witted, obsessed with sex or confused about what they want. Eddington (Uncle Richard) is regarded by his family as something of a joke. Toby Stephens (Young Oliver) plays a left wing idealist who serves in the Spanish Civil War, lusts after Jennifer Ehle and complains about spending his army career running away from the Germans. Oliver Cotton (Max) plays a violinist who escapes from the clutches of the Nazis in Vienna and chases after the entire female cast. In Episode Five we meet older versions of the characters, including: Oliver (Richard Johnson), Sophy (Claire Bloom) and Calypso (Rosemary Harris)who talk about their past. Overall, it's fun, fast paced, beautifully written and brilliantly directed.

A story about a family (and associated friends) where most of the characters are either selfish or inadequate seems an unlikely hit, but I continue to find this one of my favorite winter evening viewings. The story is told, as in the book, with flash-forwards that help crystallize your opinions of the characters and their motivations. With promiscuous behavior throughout, various unconventional relationships (Polly and the twins, Max and his town wife/country wife etc), it would have been all too easy for the series to dissolve into an orgy of explicit sex; this was, after all, made by Channel 4, who can teach HBO a thing or too about the subject! It runs along a pace, and as each episode ends, the temptation to just press play and watch the next is strong.The performances are wonderful. I loved Felicity Kendall as the bad-tempered matriarch in the flash-forwards. Jennifer Ehle is, of course, delectable, and completely gorgeous, and acts the pants off everyone. Her accent is a wonderful mids-40s upper-class English, taken straight from Brief Encounter and the like. I didn't realize until today that she was born in North Carolina, I had her marked an English rose! Tara Fitzgerald plays Polly, the most likable character, a strong, self-minded and tolerant person. The male characters are weaker, but Oliver Cotton and the late Paul Eddington make the best of the material they're given.The production is great - period detail is excellent, although perhaps the grimness of war on the Home Front is not given enough emphasis. However, these are privileged people, they would have had it better than the masses simply because they had more to start with.You can watch this series over and over, like rereading a favorite book.

Jennifer Ehle is certainly attractive and shows a lot more in this epic than in her later Jane Austen roles. But for an example of dark and sultry pouting look no further than Tara Fitzgerald. This production also features everyones 1970's favourite pin-up Felicty Kendal, but she's playing an old woman here folks!