The Company

Michael Keaton's performance is spellbinding, astounding. I couldn't believe what I was watching. When he's on screen, he lifts the piece onto a wholly different level. Unreservedly worth watching for his screen time alone. The unnerving atmosphere he creates happily offsets the unfortunate mawkishness that marrs parts of the Berlin and Budapest stories. Alfred Molina also deserves praise for a strong, gutsy performance as a permanently booze-fueled, no nonsense old time field commander. Production values are pretty high for a television series - Ridley Scott's production presence no doubt helped on that front - and the post-war look and atmosphere of the Berlin sequences is particularly well realised. But this is unmistakably Keaton's tour-de-force.