I didn't know what I was getting into with Armadillo. I'd seen the odd trailer, perhaps doctored by A&E to make it look like science-fiction; I knew nothing of the book; I suspected it might even be a TV series. My first ray of hope came when I heard Frain's voice; my second when he got out of the right side of his motor car; and from then on I was hooked. I still didn't know if it was a series or not, and so when the one hour mark approached, I looked at the clock and wondered if this was it, if there would be a quick denouement. But it went happily on, into a second hour, and as that hour neared its end I wondered the same thing again. Still I was not sure that this was not at least some kind of TV pilot, yet when we entered hour three I was fairly sure I was watching something of quality, marred only by the kind of butchering a colony channel like A&E could be guilty of. I was so in the dark that I didn't even recognise the main characters for a while (ok, Fox was relatively easy); then it suddenly went up for me who Hogg was, and Flavia looked familiar, but I couldn't place her either - it was just a good movie, and undoubtedly would have been better if it hadn't been butchered by a colonial channel hell-bent on selling laundry detergent at four o'clock in the morning. For me, one of its best features was how it was totally unpredictable: you really didn't know where the whole thing was going; another was Catherine - she was so delicious - and perhaps a bit 'picky' as others have suggested - but I just kept hanging on the 'get the girl' scenes, and for me the ending was quite yummy, although it didn't offer the same kind of exposure found in, for example, Tailor of Panama. Do see this gem, but try to get a copy sent over from England, or better yet, move to England. Oh - you'll find a good interview with Frain about the movie at the BBC site - just search for 'Armadillo'.
