White Heat

"White Heat" begins quietly and remains low-key, but it grows on you and the final episode yields a captivating surprise. Its strengths stand in contrast to the failings of "The Hour", another recent drama situated in recent British history. "The Hour" starts out looking like a thriller somehow related to the Suez invasion and Hungarian uprising of 1956; but the thriller plot fades into an inconsequential side-show and all that is left at the end is period soap-opera. "White Heat" follows its characters from 1965 to the present day, with public events mainly occurring in the background and serving as chronological markers, although they do impinge on the lives of two of the characters. Some aspects of the plot are stereotyped, but the drama scrupulously eschews soap-opera glitz, and the characters show plausible development--that's why it grows on you. The actors are generally excellent, but I did feel that the casting of Juliet Stevenson as the present-day avatar of Claire Foy's character was ill judged, since the appearance, styles and diction of the two actors are all strikingly dissimilar. It might have mattered less had the drama been chronologically divided between "then" and "now", but there is no way that the character portrayed by Foy over 35 years could have turned, in another 20, into the character played by Stevenson.

...and continue to prosecute their teenage grievances 30 years later.

Clunky dialogue and annoying characters. The real problem with the series isn't the haphazard history, it's the utter implausibility of the friendships it depicts. There's not much here that's genuinely novel and for a show centred on twenty-somethings discovering the pleasures of the sixties there's precious little joy to be found.

Quickly proves to be a warmed-over and tepid mishmash of changing-times clichés. By the last episode I just didn't care whose flat it was.

Clichéd, whiny drivel about middle-aged disappointment and people whose emotions are seemingly stuck in aspic.

Couldn't disagree more with the previous reviewer. I found the characterisation to be subtle, the plot engaging and the denouement moving. I was an undergraduate in the early sixties so am a contemporary of the protagonists. Apart from the occasional idiomatic anachronism - nobody said 'A big ask' in the sixties - I found its depiction of the period convincing.

Given that tastes differ - some people enjoy reading Jeffrey Archer - don't write the series off without giving it a try: one episode should be enough to see whether it grabs you or whether you find, like GTBarker, it's not your cup of tea.

I can understand why some people have mixed feelings about this drama series. The dialogue is a little clichéd and occasional non-contemporary idioms pop up and the deep involvement of so many significant social and historical events in the lives of this small group of individuals is a rather incredible over-concentration of themes. Nonetheless, it's a consistently engaging series with very well acted characterisations that rise above those problems and to its credit it conveys the feel of those times, certainly as I remember them, very accurately. Perhaps best of all, it conveys the folly of a lot of youthful social behaviour, with years lost to mistakes and the realisation of how much was lost and how much better things could have been coming only in old age. That is how it is for many of us. I was pleased though that there was a sense of lessons learned and opportunities rekindled at the end, again how it is for many of us. Well worth watching.

I like to support original drama that isn't entirely period, but I have to say that if this is the best script the BBC had in the offering recently the future of original programming in this country is in big trouble. The characters not only don't gel they are as dull as dishwater, which at least matches the storyline, much as there is one. It's as if someone born in the 80s was commissioned to write a story about the period and advised by someone who may have been around then but who didn't go out much nor pay any attention the contemporary culture that was going on outside their firmly bolted front door and blacked out windows. And then we are asked to believe the dreary characters who all have nothing in common and lead dreary lives have actually formed lifelong friendships which had one miraculous effect on them: by the time we reached the present day they all look at least one decade younger than they would in reality. So boring characters, zero storyline and managed to make the 60s look dull. Ridiculous dumbed-down nonsense dressed up as drama for the dumbed-down generation.