andrewpugh607

Well these are my favourite books and the wait for an adaptation has been painful. And with something so good you really wanted it to come accross as well on the screen. And it almost does. The production values are good quality and the plot maintains its integrity even with bringing in Barak a book early. Shardlake is acted superbly, just how he should be - afflicted with his condition but a man of integrity and compassion (and a little steel). One mark off for the usual multicultural rubbish. Been said a million times and it didn't ruin it no, but anything that stops you being fully immersed in a programme is a negative. The one actual character of colour, Brother Guy is underused and Abbot Florian's whole vulnerability was from him being a patricial figure of high birth lost in the maelstrom of the dissolution of the monasteries, so the casting totally negated this no matter how well acted it was. Apart from that oh so common complaint it would have been a 10.

The initial low rating for this, 6.0, is quite perplexing. High quality drama with a real feeling of the absolute bleakness, randomness and inhumanity that existed in these camps. Yet showing human spirit and humanity amongst people treated as inhuman by their captors. Really well acted with every character having depth. I think enjoying it is probably the wrong word but it is quality tv Not quite a perfect 10, I did appreciate the value of moving beween ww2 and the present day but it was done a bit too frequently for me and disrupted the drama a bit. And old Lali had an accent which young Lali didnt..did he develop it in Australia?

Having just seen this truly astounding episode I took a look on IMBD to see the feedback. 7.9 at time of writing?? I mean the series (and it's a great series) is topping 9 so the low score for this truly beautifully crafted episode made me a bit sad deep in my soul.

I'm guessing there are a lot of people out there who felt short changed on the zombie/violence content this week. No doubt a large amount of low scores come from gamers unhappy that the concept of the game is somehow corrupted by this ( Now I kind of get how readers of books get annoyed if an adaptation goes off script but surely a video game adaption needs some fleshing out? It's like complaining Pirates of the Caribbean didn't stay faithful to the ride!) Sadly no doubt some who feel agendas are being pushed (plenty of examples in shows where this happens - this isn't one of them). Maybe some who felt it was a filler and out of place. I myself did wonder why the story had veered off from the main characters so abruptly. But then I realised how much context was being provided. How across the country individuals were surviving and just how long the human race had been broken. Its easy to show a catastrophe and then come back with a caption "20 years later" - this episode showed two men getting old together, isolated against a disintegrated society. And without spoilers it was done beautifully, as I said - it managed to transcend the show.