Man in an Orange Shirt

The emotions, the love, the fear, the self-hatred, the harsh realities. I really loved it; however it felt incomplete, like we got part 1 and part 3 but they forgot to film part 2. Too many unanswered questions for a drama with this much emotional heft.

It is far to be perfect. and that does to critic it very easy. but it gives the right story, using the right actors. and that saves a lot it. because it is a film about secrets, love and relationship. at first sigh, two films. different. with a common point. in fact, it is a film about family. from different perspectives. with wise manner to explore sensitivities, decisions, solitudes. sure, a BBC film is , always, decent to remarkable. but, in this case, the manner to define the honesty, the link between men from same family, in different periods, defining their "sin" in different ways, is more than admirable. and the end, the end has the status of changement about many things from the film. not as revelation. but as the detail giving precise form to sihouettes. so, I admitt : I love it !.

All together they are very beautiful stories. Unfortunately they are placed into two 1 hour parts. They needed about double the time to marinate in more storytelling. Each of the individual relationships were so complex I was left wanting to see them develop more gradually. Despite this, the excellent cast (and the director) do all that they can to avoid it all coming off clumsily. There is a lot of beauty on the screen, especially with part 1 of the two.

They were able to make me care about the characters and the parallels between the two accounts, but I think it could have been much richer by delving deeper into each of their stories.

There was missing information and plot development in both stories so both should have been 90 to two hours long each.

In first one, there should have been some explanation as to the circumstance of how the grandson came to live with the grandmother and also what happened to his parents. Did the parents die in a car or airplane crash? Of a disease? It just left the viewer hanging.

There is a shot of the son in his school uniform and in a military uniform, but nothing else. I'd also like to know why the grandfather, Michael, died at 60.

For the second story, you can see some connection between Adam and Steve but there needed to be more plot as to that connection. Also, more background as to why Adam was hesitant in getting involved with Steve because all he says is "I can't" but he doesn't explain why. The jarring scene with the grandmother's harsh homophobia seems to come out of nowhere in terms of her reaction. She already had her suspicions of her grandson but then to react the way she did, didn't really make a lot of sense other than pent up anger from decades ago.

Then, at the end the second story the grandmother shows up at the cottage but there is no explanation given as to her remorse and what made her come about/change her mind about her homophobia.

Anyway, I liked both stories and watched them twice as I thought I missed some key information as stated above, but I did not because the information wasn't there.

I watched this series as part of the 2018 US PBS Pride series. It was shown in its entirety. The story of forbidden is not unusual for the gay world, but something about this was very genuine in it's writing and portrayal. The plot line moves along quickly as there was such a short time for the writers to tell two complicated and deep stories. The first section seemed to just be getting it's wind when we lept forward several decades to the modern world. We were just learning about the leads, the loves and their lives. The second section brought in many of today's challenges with instant sex, but not much love. Again, there were many question about what happened in between. However, the quality of the production and the talent of the cast made it a gem to watch. And yes there are tears. As many others have said, worth the watch and if we could have the years in the middle please as a 2019 BBC pride production, I am sure that the audience is there.