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Matthew McFayden and Hayley Atwell just lit up the screen... I thought perhaps the glory days of BBC Sunday night costume dramas had past, but their performances here were wonderful, the control and command of the dialogue was exquisite. A delight.

I have given 9 out of 10, so I will note that a few minor quibbles: - Some of the plot elements were a bit clunky - It wasn't always clear how much time had elapsed or how much the characters had aged - It felt a little stretched out to episodes

...is that they don't put their money where their mouth is and have a lead character played by a racial minority person. Inserting people of color in some of their recent productions is just too obviously done because they have to stick a minority in there somewhere or they will feel the trendy white guilt. It is an insult to anyone with a logical and realistic brain cell in their head why they do this. And although I am sure the minority actors are very happy to have the roles and the money and the exposure, you would think they would feel somewhat put out because they are being used to be tokens of political correctness not because of their talents.

Although I felt the 1992 film was so good that it couldn't be improved on, I found this TV version surprisingly good and the four hours hardly seemed enough to contain all the strands of the story. The acting was perfect, neither overdone nor underdone. As it happens, I live in Stevenage and know the location of Howards End well. The location used was somewhere else of course but I thought it was quite like the original could have been in 1890 when the author would have known it, and perfect for the purposes of the drama. I sympathise with the points people make about black servants and so on, but whether or not these exist in the book, they are certainly quite plausible for the time. The winner for me was E.M. Forster again, as it was in 1992, but I will miss the programme and wish there could be a sequel - perhaps another Passage to India. It's indeed a pity that Forster stopped writing novels so soon, as with his understanding of social mores and change, he would have been a good person to write about the 1930s or 1940s. The last hour was for me a blissful one.

... I much preferred the 1992 Emma Thompson/Anthony Hopkins/James Ivory movie version. Perhaps I'm too much a fan of Merchant Ivory films. It's a pleasure watching Matthew Macfadyen in anything. And I look forward to future roles for Hayley Atwell. It's not that this mini-series version is inferior. It simply didn't arouse as much of my sympathy for any of the characters as the 1992 version.

I'm writing this review after episode 2, mainly to counter some of the other overly critical reviews of Howard's End.

I loved the movie version with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins, but I feel this miniseries version can explore further some of the issues and topics E.M. Forster touched on in his book; class, gender, nationality etc. Also the mirrored circumstances across the class divide and how characters deal with them

As regards race and some of the casting i.e. the housemaid and Jacky Bast, I think they were interesting choices and one Forster would have approved of. He was a fierce opponent of racism (especially anti-anti-semitism) and, to answer another question a reviewer posed, yes there were black people in Edwardian London, all part of the class struggles of the period.

The cast are all excellent, especially Hayley Atwell and Philippa Coulthard. The costumes and cinematography are great. In the first episode the background music seemed rather loud and obtrusive, but this wasn't a problem for me in episode 2. I'm looking forward to episodes 3 & 4.

To those who say it's slow and nothing happens, I'm not sure what to say. Maybe watch the other channel with 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here' on it, or a Transformers movie.