Des Hauses Hüterin

Once in a while, a tv drama grabs your attention and becomes memorable. This is a tale of desperate people flung together, making the best of their lives under a cloud of a big lie.

Great performances throughout.

What happens when three lonely people, all of whom are looking for something, be it love, support or comfort, encounter one another, and begin living a lie, a sumptuous, comfortable, glorious lie?

What a wonderful ninety minute drama this is, it's so incredibly weird and wonderful, but engaging, funny, intriguing, and has a real shock moment.

It starts off In a somewhat serious tone, then becomes an almost whimsical drama of wonder and disbelief, until the traumatic act that totally transforms the story.

Stef had come from an awful home life, Jason truly was a monster, Michael started off as a petty thief, was Jean perhaps the most deluded and crazed of them all? Did she perhaps cause the events?

I wonder if like me, you kept on waiting for people to turn up?

It's crazy, it's brilliant. 9/10.

There is something so utterly implausible about this story but it is done so well that you can't help being sucked in and believing it. For the film makers to depict three varying dysfunctional and desperate characters whose behaviour is so morally inexcusable yet still manage to generate empathy in the viewer shows a great deal of skill and professionalism. Penelope Wilton is excellent in her understated portrayal of Jean, a pathetic and lonely old woman who slowly descends into madness. The actors who play Steph and Michael are brilliant, too. This is down to a credible script and great directing, as well as heaps of skill by both of the performers.

Make no mistake, this film is tragic and so will not appeal to a lot. There is a desperation and darkness throughout which is tangible and reminiscent of the atmosphere created in 'The Visitor', although this story's protagonists are unhinged and not just desperate and lonely.

British film making at its most intense and best.

I can't say I found this drama at all entertaining.

It started off ok with an interesting storyline but soon it degenerated to a level where it was impossible to have any sort of sympathy with the lead characters.

The inevitable ending was unfulfilling because there was no way that it could have ended positively.

Good performances, but flawed characters.

Downloaded from YouTube.

Tim Fywell has been perhaps the best British television drama director for many years now, and it is a mystery why he has not been gobbled up by the big feature film producers yet. But here he is with his latest offering, and it is just as chilling and anxiety-producing as his eerie and unforgettable Barbara Vine dramas of the 1990s. This disturbing and nail-biting tale is based upon a novel by Morag Joss and is excellently scripted by Alan Whiting. What puts the whole project over the top into a realm of its own is the impeccable casting and the acting by the three principals. Penelope Wilton, Daniel Mays, and Sinead Matthews are so overwhelmingly convincing that one simply cannot imagine anybody else playing any of their roles. They absolutely became those people, to a terrifying degree. The intensity of this film is almost unbearable. The characters come together to live a dangerous joint fantasy life in somebody else's empty house. All of them are seriously damaged souls who have suffered terrible psychological deprivation or even physical abuse. In each other they finally find what they have always been looking for. But living a dream is dangerous, because there is something big and threatening called Reality which doesn't like people to do this and get away with it. What will happen? How bad can it get? The intensity rises, and rises, and rises. No pity is shown to the viewers who maybe can't stand all of this anxiety, want to turn it off, but can't. What solution can there possibly be? By now we are so enamoured of the three characters that we want them to win, they are all so endearing, so pathetic, so much at the very edge of human desperation and need. Why can't people who have been driven that far find some comfort and be entitled to it? And then the moral barriers begin to become permeable, and things begin to leak through, dripping, dripping, ominously. And the clock is ticking.