Just in case you were tempted towards nostalgia for the era of Miss Marple - even, bless, a juicy murder or three - along comes a handsomely mounted, superbly acted drama that'll have you happy that the past is a foreign country, where things were done very differently.
Based on the novel by Sadie Jones, this is the tale of Lewis Aldridge (George MacKay), who becomes the eponymous outcast after witnessing his beloved mother's accidental drowning as a boy. We haven't read the novel and thought the scant publicity looked rather liked (whisper it) chick lit, but this was 90 minutes of sensitive storytelling, beginning when Lewis's father Gilbert (Greg Wise) returned from the war a damaged, distant near-stranger. Unable to share his grief at Elizabeth's (Hattie Morahan) tragic death, he sends his son off to boarding school and remarries. Young Alice (Jessica Brown-Findlay) tries to become a mother, to her stepson and in her own right, but she fails at both, and by the time Lewis reaches his teens he is in very deep trouble indeed.
Yes, these were the days of sunny bike rides in green pastures, solid furniture, swishy table skirts and smoke-filled jazz clubs in sexy soho, but the same era brought disgusted incomprehension towards self-harm, guilt, loneliness and grief. There's still a chance that this will turn out to be a very 21st Century take on the 1950s (we've left Lewis sentenced after burning down the local church) but so far this has been a welcome addition to the current rich pickings on British TV, alongside 'Humans', 'Odyssey' and 'The Saboteurs'.
Windswept moors, smugglers and mangled west country accents, yes, we're in Du Maurier territory again for another remake of 'Jamaica Inn', starring Jessica Brown Findlay (dead Sybil Crawley from 'Downton') as Mary Yellan, the ingenue who 'bain't be from 'ereabouts' who must face cruelty, madness and Matthew McNulty on the Bodmin Road.
Ms Brown Findlay plays Mary less as naive waif than sulky teenager with a deprived childhood, while Sean Harris and Matthew McNulty reprise roles they seem to specialise in - laconic meanie and handsome rough diamond respectively - as Joss and Jem Merlyn. For a rollicking, sinister tale, it takes a long time to get going. Half an hour in and Mary's realised that the titular inn is barely upright in the evil wind blowing across the moor, and that it isn't a place to stay clean in any sense, but little else has happened. Joanne Whalley, as jittery, broken Aunt Patience, gives an understated performance in what could (and often is) either an overplayed or deeply unsympathetic role, but at a third of the way through, a stay in the modern, standardised and deeply unexciting Jamaica Inn would be preferable to a stay with the Merlyns, and as du Maurier fans that's saying something.
And while we're on the subject, nor is the adaptation particularly faithful to the book, with Mary helping her uncle's criminal gang, albeit reluctantly, in receiving wrecked goods on the beach. Women did lead hard lives, but Mary's active, physical participation in men's work of the day feels like a sop to a 21st Century audience. She ends the episode morally compromised, having protected Jem and by implication her uncle, echoed by a tide line of mud risen from the hem of her skirt to her thigh. It would have been better scheduled over the Easter break, which has been largely devoid of new drama, and would have been improved by better sound. We aren't in our dotage, but half of the lines were muttered and thrown away, while the music blasted out loud and clear.
An adaptation of Kate Mosse's bestseller and one of a rash of swords and sorcery epics around. Presumably TV and film producers spotted that Harry Potter was equally popular with adults and decided to make adultified (i.e. added sex, violence and swearing) versions so that grown-ups needn't be ashamed of watching and could be more satisfied to boot. Except... there's a patina of childish mush about most of them that leaves us cold. Maybe they're just not our cup of tea, and if teenagers come to this and are inspired to read about real history, or classics like the Tolkiens etc. great. Those older should know better, though, surely, than to passively imbibe the likes of everything from 'The Tudors' to 'Game of Thrones' (OK, one is pure fantasy, the other is... pure fantasy, but - we'll stop there) and think them entertaining?
We did try with this one, truly we did, but the dialogue was turgid, the wigs were bad and the clothes seemingly borrowed from 'Robin Hood', 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Merlin'. The off-switch beckoned. Maybe it would have fared better on a night with the full complement of hours, rather than the hour-stealing commencement of British Summertime (whatever and whenever that proves to be) but that's damning with the faintest praise. We're sure fans of any of the programmes mentioned above will find it passable at least, but we couldn't have cared less whether present and past collided or whether they missed each other by miles.
