DoctorStrabismus

Seldom do we see a performance so clearly meriting an Oscar as this one by Toby Jones. Of course, Richard Burton himself had no fewer than seven Oscar nominations, for zero wins, so Toby will likely get the same treatment over there. I mean, let's face it, the movie had no shootings and no car chases!

I am of an age which means I recall Richard Burton steadily accumulating theatrical fame, the marriages and divorces with Elizabeth Taylor, and many of the great performances. And above all, there was the resonance of his incomparable voice.

When I was growing up in London, my 'prim and proper' mother was most censorious about Burton and Taylor, which only made me want to know about them all the more!

Having later lived in South Wales, I know the area of Port Talbot and Neath, and speak some limited amount of Welsh. I found the depiction of all that to be genuinely accurate, with the intense pride in the language and the nation. The final line of the national anthem is "O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau", meaning "long may the old language live on". This was all very well borne out by these performances.

Is the movie a perfect 10? Maybe it falls short with the sudden eight-year time gap, and we are deprived of any portrayal of the early growth of Burton's acting career, and the change in his personality over that time span. Even with a running time close to two hours, five or ten minutes on that phase in his life would have helped. This might have been achieved by devoting less screen time to the homosexuality issue. I have read that Philip Burton was gay and Richard Burton was bi-sexual, and without investigating the truth of either of those two claims, I still wonder whether the gossip around Port Talbot could have been that strong. Police intervention would surely have been highly likely in the 1940s if the word was going around like that. I feel it more likely that nobody would greatly question that one of the 13 children of a drunken widower miner, for whom there was no space in the father's home, and obvious difficulties living in the elder married sister's due to conflict with her husband, might take a room which became vacant at a boarding house. A thread which was overplayed.

So I'll give it 9/10. It was thoroughly enjoyable, and also highly educational about a man who became a very large figure in British post-war life.

Our first reaction to this 6-part murder mystery was one of enjoyment, and we couldn't wait for the final instalment to reveal whether or not we had been correct in our guess of whodunnit. In fact, we were, so that was the good news.

The bad news was that we had tried to figure out the motive, but our guesses of that had been badly wrong, and right up until the 'reveal' there had really been no pointers, no clues, almost a total vacuum of relevant information about whytheydunnit.

Others have pointed out a serious confusion of its period setting. Apparently there was some statement of it being 1988, but I missed that, and there was apparently late 80s music being played. One character referred to an event of 1943 as being "40 years ago" so that would place it as 1983. But the sets and the clothing were far more 1960s or even 1950s, as was the very quiet little village where everyone knew everyone, and what everyone was doing before they ever did it. By the 1980s that would have been far less the case. I was born in the 1940s, so I kind of liked the feeling of these sets taking me back to my childhood, and not to the 80s, when I was well into mid-career. I really did have to keep reminding myself that it was not supposed to be 1960 England that I was watching.

One small plus, as a great devotee of 'New Tricks', was having the two 'guvnors' from that series both there, with very opposing views!

Finally when we did get the motive explained, we thought "Oh really?" It made no sense.

It would be fair to give it 7/10 for the way it hooked us in, and the enjoyment we had, but it's impossible to give it more after such carelessness and ultimate weakness of plot.