Dandelion Dead

A superb period piece with Michael Kitchen owning the role of Armstrong. The supporting cast is excellent. The story is at once darkly humorous and purely evil. A must watch.

Apart from that it ok. Just forget it, can't decide if it is farse or drama and ends being just farsical. Watch some commercials they would be more entertaining.

A top notch ITV production The writer Michael Chaplin delivers a crisp , subtle and brilliant screenplay , Mike Hodges directs with understated menace but also a lot of charm .

The period detail is spot on , the atmosphere gripping but stifling .

Michael Kitchen is fabulous , Sarah Miles , venomous , David Thewlis is excellent in a very early role and Lesley Sharp delivers as a bit of a strumpet .

The details of the case are very accurately portrayed and the ending is very unusual and quite ambiguous .

ITV drama has recently returned to this top level of quality with programmes like Anne and Stonehouse .

Wish Kitchen had not had the mustache. Wish Sarah Miles wasn't in it. I agree with the previous comment that she is over-rated and has no appeal at all. Even her voice, perhaps mostly her voice, is so unattractive that when she's speaking I turn off the sound. She is the fly in the ointment of any film she has been in, including Poirot. Otherwise this is a well-paced and beautifully photographed film. The settings are historically accurate and well thought out and researched. I enjoyed seeing the dignified offices, were they really so beautiful? Was this very English film successful in the USA? American films tend to move much faster, with warnings of 'flashing images'. No problem with that in this film, it maintains a steady slow pace which renders it plausible and life-like. David Thewliss is a wonderful contrast to Kitchen. His hangdog expressions provide a light touch, a technique Shakespeare uses to great effect. A superb film which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I notice that the two comments with an American address have found difficulty appreciating the "Englishness" of the portrayals and general directorial approach. One complains of the missed opportunity to delve into the psychological thriller possibilities of the plot. Surely the point is that it is not meant to be a thriller at all and that this is all the better for it. As for Sarah Miles' acting, few play neurotic and repressed better than her. This is mainly why the death so strongly elicits sympathy in the watcher however morally unacceptable. I felt the production was perfectly pitched, the acting uniformly on target and Michael Kitchen, outstanding, doing what he does best, stiff upper lip, repressed emotion, English social manners etc.