...und griffen nach den Sternen

After watching A Woman of Substance and Hold the Dream, this final installment was a bitter let down. I don't know why Jenny Seagrove was not in this, but the usually excellent Lindsay Wagner was on auto-pilot as Paula O'Neill and Anthony Hopkins was wasted in a pointless role. Can you tell I didn't like it yet?!?

A wafer-thin plot, totally ignoring the best parts of BTB's book and a decidedly dicky script did not redeem this - well, I don't know what to call it really.

The whole thing also looks very dated, even though it was only filmed in 1992 - it looks more like '82 to me!

I would advise people who have read the books to stick to the books and the first two mini-series and avoid this one like the plague!

This, to me, is a very good TV movie showing the problems a career woman must face with family love, rivalry with members of a family-owned business. It may be very different from the book by Barbara Taylor Bradford but the producer and director have the right and option to change the contents and story so long as the TV movie is entertaining to the TV audience. It could be foolish and idiotic to keep comparing this program with the original book.

After watching the previous two episodes in this trilogy, I wouldn't have even known this was IN the series were it not for the character names! Jenny Seagrove was BRILLIANT as Emma Harte and very good as Paula O'Neill but, for some reason (and I strongly suspect that she, herself declined this third part! I would have!) as another commentator has already asked, why on earth was an American actress cast as an English businesswoman?

Of particular interest though was the continuity not better adhered to between episodes? In Hold the Dream (the second in the series) There is an excellent close-up of Emma Harte's grave where the inscription reads, "In loving memory of Emma Harte Lowther-Ainsley who died 15th Jan 1986 aged 80 years. Sadly Missed by All" whilst, in this film there is also a very good close-up of her gravestone with the inscription, "I loving memory of Emma Harte 1889 - 1970". If the producers can't do better than this, then perhaps they are in the wrong business! Mind you, after this long, perhaps they HAVE found their true calling - and it won't be in filmmaking!

Whilst the first episode "A Woman of Substance" was a classic British production (and, by the way, still the biggest audience record-holder for Channel 4 in England), this final episode is more like a pretty poor version of "Days of OUr Lives" or "The Bold and the Beautiful"!

By the way, just in passing, does anyone else think that Jenny Seagrove is a double of Elizabeth Montgomery (of "Bewitched" fame)? I wonder if Jenny can wiggle her nose!

True, Barbara Taylor Bradford is not a great writer. In fact, the Harte trilogy is the only body of her work I've liked at all. And this, the conclusion, is certainly not one of the better books in the series.

That said, however, the book is far better than this piece of junk adaptation. Lindsay Wagner is about as miscast as anyone could possibly get (and that's even without counting an American playing a British character), the plot bears no resemblance to anything it was based on, and Anthony Hopkins gets second billing (and lots of screen time) playing a character who was only in the book for about five lines. What a letdown.

Having sat down to watch what I expected to be a pretty dire video while eating a take out curry, I was quite amazed at the sheer banality of the plot and script, and the unremitting woodenness of the acting.

However, and I know this sounds like a set-up, one person made me stop chewing long enough to check the cast listing. As it happened the role was not listed as far as I could see, and I had to come onto imdb to identify the actress.

While far from redeeming the whole shocker, Catherine Roman plays her heart out [in the nicest sense] in the role of "waitress" - yes, you heard right, waitress! According to imdb this is her one and only professional role, which is a shame.

Watch it before you scoff and see if you agree.

Cheers all - make mine an extra double decaff.