The Long Firm

The Long Firm is good but unfortunately it seems to be a semi documentary based on a mixture of the Krays and the Richardsons who are just old hat now. It's a pity, but just like most rubbish British films featuring the 60s such as "Scandal", "Charlie" and "The Krays" that were really terrible films. The Long Firm it is full of stuff nicked from those turkeys and suffers badly by it's obvious likeness. I haven't read the book so I won't comment on whether the author realized his main character Harry is a ridiculous stereotype.

It has all been done before but TLF does it better. The torture scenes(The Krays and Charlie), Phil Daniels popping pills and remorsing on throwing a woman out of the car(Jack the Hat in The Krays) the nightclub scenes (Scandal) it contains too many characters like Barbara Windsor, Ronnie Knight,Johnny Ray, Joe Meek, Brian Epstien like you were reading a 60s gossip column. So who is Harry Starks based on, who knows but his Mum and aunty May have been seen before just like all the other characters.

The Long Firm screenplay could have been written by anybody who has watched The Biography Channel and seen Scorsese's "Goodfellas" and the movies mentioned previously. It is very well produced and directed and all the actors are great especially Mark Strong who excels and is destined for Hollywood.

The Long Firm is far better than any of the Brit movies mentioned previously but it could have been a lot better if hadn't been so unoriginal and predictable.

I binging watched it because I wanted to know the outcome, loved it. Liked the characters in it as well.

Fantastic!

An authentic image of a gangster and a beautifully conveyed story. Brilliant acting; especially Mark Strong's emotional and moving character. A delicate balance of drama, thrill and violence. It's the plot that kept me watching till 3 O'clock in the morning. The four characters telling their own story in each episode is a marvelous film-noir touch. A masterpiece by novel writer, Jake Arnott, brought thrice as powerful by the conversion to visual which was done perfectly. Not a single boring moment, and not for one second does it lose it's authentic aura. A must-see series.

I would like to disagree with any previous comments on The Long Firm. I think this is an outstanding drama. The BBC should invest more money into dramas of this quality instead of spending money on D.I.Y shows and 'reality' TV shows.

Mark Strong's portrayal of Harry Starks reminded me Ronnie Kray, Reggie Kray, Charlie Richardson all rolled into one. He was excellent as the 'Torture Boss'. He was menacing and unpredictable but also you sort of saw him as a anti-hero if you like.

The program has taken large chunks of dialog from the book and had extra scenes and stuff written around it. All though I originally thought the show was excellent but after reading the book the book is out of this world a solid 10/10. I would recommend this book to everyone.

I am hoping the following two books in the sequence 'He Kills Coppers' and 'True Crime' get made into series.

I tuned in to 'The Long Firm'" with high hopes. A modern historical drama starring the excellent Mark Strong looked promising, bringing to mind memories of 'Our friends in the north' - one of the best TV dramas of the past 20 years. Having now seen the fourth and final episode, I have to say that, although it was entertaining and extremely well-made, I was more than a little disappointed.

I am loathe to criticise ambitious drama like this in the light of the soapy dreck that constitutes the vast majority of British televisual output. However, 'The Long Firm' promised more than it delivered. And its faults lay firmly with the writing.

Each episode used a different narrator to relay details of their associations with the main character, London gangster Harry Starks. The technique proved clumsy, with the voice-overs unsubtle and unenlightening. Why employ such a method if ultimately the insights are all the same? More friction needed to exist between what we saw and what we heard for it to work. Like too much modern drama, the approach didn't transcend its stylistic facility.

In the same vein, character development and the attendant psychological underpinnings (e.g. gangster as thwarted celebrity/entertainer) were clichéd and overly familiar. The final episode, in particular, was embarrassingly heavy-handed in its satire of the counter-culture and academia. In general there was too much pastiche and caricature to allow real interest. Any emotional impact generated by these people was purely down to the skill of the actors and the director. Also, I haven't read the source novel by Jake Arnott, but I am presuming that it made a more profitable and resonant use of the metaphorical title. Here, it was explained briefly in episode one and then thrown away.

Ultimately, each episode proved highly watchable but somehow unsatisfying, leaving this viewer to assume that we were building to some revelation/twist/new insight that never came, the screenwriter happy to fashion the piece into little more than a summation of period iconography/psychology.

There was much to enjoy, though. The piece was extremely well-cast, mixing a few expected-but-impressive veterans with a lot of talented but lesser-known faces. Mark Strong proved to be a commanding linchpin as Starks, bringing charisma and nuance to the role. Also notable were Lena Headey's Ruby Ryder, the excellent George Costigan, and Shaun Dingwall as Harry's biographer. The period detail and mise en scene were nicely understated and entirely convincing, and there were nice, ballsy touches like the interpolation of footage from the 'Parkinson' show. Additionally there were a few welcome surprises on the contemporaneous soundtrack, such as Janice Nicholls' novelty hit 'I'll give it five'. Or 'Oi'll give eet foive!'.

Perhaps I expected a little too much from this piece. I walked away reasonably entertained but with an air of opportunities unfulfilled.