Best Interests

Would it have been possible for the mom's hair to ever look like she was a normal person? She almost always looked like her hair had just been brushed and combed throughout the whole show and make her look unreal and sort of plastic. Everybody else looked real like they usually do in British television. But Michael Sheen as usual was the best. You completely forget that he's Michael Sheen. He just sort of melts into the character. I liked the actress who plays the mom much better in Bad Sisters than in this show. She was just sort of one note in this one. But the show does a pretty good job of just showing how everybody gets completely effed up by these tragic family situations.

Starring two great actors Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen and written by one of our best British TV writers Jack Thorne my expectations were high and I wasn't disappointed.

Its impossible to watch this story and not be deeply moved as it examines one of those dilemmas every parent prays they'll never face. It's emotional and raw and entirely convincing, not the easiest watch but an essential one not to be overlooked.

Tragic events all too often split families apart for the wrong reasons and 'Best Interests' explores that territory dramatically and sucessfully, you will be in tears.

Cast were great and production values were good all round. Recommended, watch it.

I enjoyed Best Interests, similar in storyline to The Children Act. Thought provoking, emotional, hard to watch at times, but being the BBC, it has to include every minority in a small community which makes it a bit ridiculous. The father is realistic, and likeable but the mother is the irrational and blind sided parent who is convinced everyone is out to kill her daughter, not considering her "best interests".

It really opens your eyes to the challenges faced by families with a terminally ill child. There really is never any break or respite and puts massive strain on all the family relationships.

Michael Sheen is TREMENDOUS.

Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen play the parents of a child who, after a lifetime of illness is on life support in the hospital and have a massive disagreement as to how her future should be managed.

Jack Thorne wrote it and as always, he capturers the emotions and anguish of the conflicted parents in all its pain and desperation.

I admit to crying many times, wondering how I would react to such a life changing challenge as in what they are faced with.

The couple are torn apart as their older daughter handles the while situation in a dangerous way herself, with her unknowing parents caught up in their younger daughter's precarious health.

Riveting film, brilliantly acted.

Recommend.

8/10.

A great but sad story brilliantly written and executed. Excellent performances from Sheen and Horgan as would be expected but surprisingly surpassed by the two more junior starlets, Alison Oliver and Niamh Moriarty. Looking forward to the concluding episodes, it has me hooked from the start and is highly recommended.

The story and characters jump off the screen at you from the first scene with the parents on a short respite break which shows their humanity and close relationship but we are quickly dragged into a world where the couples relationship will be tested to the full. Katie, played excellently by Alison Oliver, is the older sister of Marnie, played superbly by Niamh Moriarty, and her own life struggling with teenage years and the lack of attention and normality from her parents who have to spend so much time on the medical needs of critically ill Marnie is an absorbing subplot.

The drama shines a bright light on the real life struggles of a family, a medical team and their contacts struggling with an impossibly difficult question to which there is no right answer. Excellent writing, directing and editing shine through, highly recommended.