Friends & Crocodiles

I can usually appreciate a good Poliakoff TV drama, but this one left me cold and even disinterested. I normally enjoy Damian Lewis's work as well, but his rather detached Paul left me not caring at all about what became of him; the quirky and enigmatic smile became irritating and more importantly, conveyed nothing at all. I felt that Jodhi May held the whole thing together; she seemed to have been written as the point-of-view character through whose eyes we see the ebb and flow of Paul's life, whilst at the same time we observe her rise and rise in the business world, something the self-sabotaging Paul could only envy.

Poliakoff generally sets his stories against a backdrop of historical social and political change. In 'Friends & Crocodiles' the social change covers the time from the hedonistic 1980's to the bursting of the dot com bubble. For me, I felt somewhat irrelevant as a viewer as the narrative dipped in and out of events in time. I believe that Poliakoff was too ambitious in attempting to create a cohesive story covering this time span in only 110 minutes of screen time. The reasons for the shortness of story-telling time may well have been financial - or whatever - but for me, this movie just didn't work, and in the end I didn't care what happened to any of the characters.

I really, really love Stephen Poliakoff's work, but I hope 'Friends & Crocodiles' remains the sole exception.

This piece seems to have divided the audience and critics. We have seen and heard more negative reviews than positive ones.

We thought it was a very interesting and enjoyable piece. As so often with Poliakoff, he creates characters who don't behave as you expect them to. They infuriate and they surprise you.

In this epic piece, spanning some 20 years (early eighties to early naughties)Poliakoff examines themes of business, friendships and survival in a fast-changing world.

Crocodiles are an interesting metaphor for survival and coping with change/trauma.

So are friends, both the loyal and the relatively fair-weather variety. Both types are on display here.

Drama about business is usually horribly infuriating because the playwright has little or no insight into how business really works. Similarly technology. Poliakoff understands business and technology far better than most writers.

Of course the piece simplifies and takes positions on these issues - who wants a 20 parter on such subjects - but the piece works excellently well as a sub 2 hour film for TV.

Several critics said that they "just don't get it" with this piece. I feel sorry for them if that is really the case. Perhaps most critics, like most writers, have little understanding of business and/or technology.

The acting is excellent - Damien Lewis (everywhere these days) and Jodhi May predictably good. A few cameos for old favourites too.

The cinematography is just stunning - Poliakoff is probably now at the very top of his game in this aspect of his work.

It's big canvas stuff, it is truly beautiful to look at and it leaves you plenty to think about and talk about afterwards.

We need more of this quality of stuff on TV and cinema please!! And this piece will last. Some of those who "don't get it" just now will, in a few years time, be hailing it as a classic and repeating it for decades to come. It's that sort of piece.

While looking and feeling like big production TV from the BBC the central question marks are really the pivot points of Friends and Crocodiles.

Set initially in the a multi-millionaire's world of bizarre parties and meaningless hedonism it is a timeless journey into one man and one woman's counterbalancing act. He wild. She composed. He unorganized. She overly so etc;

The Eighties in Britain were a time of an implosion of time and security, and rapidly followed by immense greed. On the flip-side of this was a vast sub-culture spawned by the rejection or denial of access to the success of Thatcherite policies.

But this is not a film about politics, or even economics, and it has a strong surreal edge to it - it is definitely worth viewing for the juxtaposition between the work ethic - protestant, bourgeois, uptight - and the new entrepreneur - free-wheeling, charismatic, and mesmerizing.

Largely successful Poliakoff writes a great visual script and directs in sweeping tranches of panoramic vistas - this is largely a film based on ken Russell's sensibilities of what make film work - it is bold, and fun, but for my taste at the end of the day - a bit like the Eighties themselves - had loads of style but the substance is obscure...

It works best in the unreal world of parties and we thought it fell apart when the parties ended. Brilliant first half. Weaker second.

The rise and fall and redemption are too commonplace - here the acting should have had power rather than a footnote to the parties - and we were left wondering if,like the Eighties, it was all a bad hangover and a fitful night.

One of Stephen Poliakoff's most interesting films, I was very glad to catch up with it recently (via Netflix DVD).

He manages to not only present a most unusual variation on screen love stories, this one about a deep but platonic relationship among co-workers but also encapsulates the key societal changes in recent decades in novel fashion.

Most impressive to me was how Poliakoff zeroed in on technological changes on society and the strange but made understandable social trends of late. The hippy era thinking that has since been replaced by right-wing emphasis on selfishness/materialism is beautifully shown in many of the characters, principally Damian Lewis's anarchic business whiz. The current turmoil of "creative destruction" and how it affects one's job security is brilliantly analyzed.

Even technological progress and fads are cleverly shown, as in the Shark Tank styled pitch session for "electric books", pre-Kindle. All that's missing in the auteur's prognostication is the smart-phone mania that has set in just a few years after shooting in 2004.

One side note is how Damian Lewis's madman in business character presages his current starring role in TV's "Billions" -quite a different character, yet this BBC TV Movie certainly could have served as his audition for the later role.

Though handsomely produced and fairly diverting, this is ultimately a rather silly movie. Characters rise and fall and undergo drastic transformations at the whim of its simple-minded plot. (Mike Leigh's two-hander "Career Girls" seemed similarly unrealistic, but its characters were so endearing that it didn't matter.)

The biggest problem with "Crocodiles" is that it has a high school freshman's idea of what the workaday business world is like. The heroine's ascent is never believable, nor are the emotional changes she goes through. The three bosses we see -- a fussy, posturing little fellow played by Allan Corduner, a ruthless corporate CEO played by Patrick Malahide, and some pushy, fault-finding fat guy at the beginning -- are all ridiculous caricatures. The office Corduner presides over resembles a kindergarten class. The Damian Lewis character is treated by everyone there with inexplicable deference and indulged for months in ways no real-life company would put up with. (In fact, his character's imperturbable smugness throughout the film is increasingly hard to take.) And in light of what's happened in the real world, his success in establishing a string of old-fashioned bookstores seems sadly ironic.

The movie also forces us to watch too many long, lavish parties, and it's a reminder that -- for me, at least -- there's nothing more boring (although they were probably fun to stage).

On the other hand, Jodhi May remains fairly breathtaking in just about anything; and considering all the closeups and screen time she gets, I have the impression that Poliakoff was as enamored of her as I am.