The Diary of Anne Frank

Just finished watching episode 5 on BBC i-player. I've been familiar with the story of Anne since I was a child, but I've never seen it told so simply or movingly as it has been over the past five nights on BBC2. I'm a cynical 45 yr old bloke, and there's honestly not much that can make me cry... I'll just have to tell my girlfriend that I've got a cold. Sensitive writing and a superb cast turned this into something special... excruciatingly sad, wonderfully uplifting.

How can anyone endure the petty posturing of Celebrity Big Brother after watching this? So am I really the only person to be posting about this?

This was an utterly stunning piece of television. It kept my whole family absolutely gripped from Monday to Friday making us laugh, cry and think as we watched Anne's story unfold. Its real strength was the lack of sensationalism and romanticisation. The final episode was as nerve shredding as any thriller and totally heartbreaking. Anne was an irritating character at times with typical teenage behaviour. Her prodigious talent was in no doubt and the fact that she was otherwise normal actually made her seem that little bit more special. Ellie Kendrick was absolutely marvellous in the role of Anne. A real talent for the future without doubt. The other actors were equally superb with none of them striking a false note. This should be required viewing for everyone. Children, especially, will relate to Anne's humane and forthright views on everything including sex. I just hope that the moral majority in the US don't mess too much with that part of it because of that, as it is integral to the life of this exceptional person.

My wife read the Diary of Anne Frank last year for English class, and when we visited Amsterdam we went to see the house.

The house in this TV series is exactly the same as the real house, almost to the extent that I wonder if they filmed it there.

The story as told in this series is very close to the book and shows Anne as she shows herself in her diary. An intelligent, boisterous, moody, lively teenage girl.

The fact that she was SO full of energy and ideas and yet was cooped up in those rooms for so long is the really moving thing about the book I think and they have captured it very well in the series.

This BBC drama feels completely authentic, I can't think of anything to criticise it about at all!

Sixty-three years after the death of Anne Frank, this drama presents the story of her years in hiding in five half-hour episodes, which focus in depth on the events within the annex above her father's factory.

Newcomer Ellie Kendrick plays Anne as a fiery teenager, struggling with inner conflicts and her emerging sexual feelings. This couldn't be presented as clearly in earlier adaptations, and I think this is the first version to use pages of the diary as source material which were originally suppressed by Anne's father, the only person of the eight in the annex to survive the war.

Iain Glen and Tamsin Grieg are both superb as Anne's parents, while Margot (Felicity Jones) and Peter Van Daan (Geoff Breton) present their characters' limited facets very well. Ron Cook, Lesley Sharp, and Nicolas Farrell play the remaining refugees (Mr and Mrs Van Daan, and dentist Mr Dussell).

You get a real sense of what it is to live in a confined space, largely in silence, with only a few hours of respite to go downstairs for food (Peter has to take potatoes from the warehouse below), and to talk and live together in some semblance of real life. For three years this was the life for eight individuals and a cat living in close proximity, sometimes with hope, sometimes with fear.

Rightly, this series ends with details of what happened to each of the refugees, and does not flinch from making clear the plight of the Jews outside of the annex, who are taken away in the night and herded into transports towards their death - such a fate also awaits the occupants of the Dutch annex, and it is with a heavy heart we realise this at the end - even though we knew it all the time, we lived in hope along with them.

I love a good TV drama, and The Diary of Anne Frank is that. Along with Occupation, it was one of the highlights of 2009, having been profoundly moved and disturbed by the events detailed in Anne Frank's diary since I was a little girl in primary school, this was a harrowing, poignant, sensitive and wonderfully acted mini-series that stayed true to the book. The mini-series is exquisite to look at, stunning costumes and settings, and the house was exactly like the house in real life. The writing is unusually sensitive, I never felt the mini-series got overly-dramatic or overly-sentimental, quite the opposite, and I think the writing really helped with that. The direction is excellent, and the music is haunting and evocative. It was the acting though where the Diary of Anne Frank really soared. Ellie Kendrick, instead of the obnoxious teenager she could have been, made for an intelligent yet somewhat lively Anne, very like the Anne in the book. Iain Glen is charming as the perfect father figure and Tamsin Grieg is luminous and quiet as the mother. Lesley Sharp is exceptional as Petronella, a selfish and independent matriarch, her actions were very entertaining. Then there is the sudden discovery, even for those who had read the book it was emotional, intense and sudden. Overall, this is a brilliant mini-series, in my opinion it is a must see! 10/10 Bethany Cox