jingsman

I was taken to see this by my mother when I was about 7 years old. We were on holiday and she was looking for something to keep me occupied for a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon. As I recall, the cinema was packed with similarly wet holiday makers. My mother knew that I liked dogs and imagined that it would go down a treat. Unfortunately, I had to be taken out of the cinema as my tears were too noisy for the other members of the audience to bear. It is not a film for young children to watch. Perhaps, these days, there is some kind of age limit on it, but sixty five years ago nothing like that existed and it came as a tremendous shock to my immature system.

I could only watch this because I knew that she survived, if survived is the word, her ordeal. At the end of the first episode I was so depressed that I was unsure whether I could watch the rest of it. I was persuaded to do so because I knew that justice would be done eventually. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be trapped, literally trapped, in a relationship like this. And the horror is made worse by the limitations of the law and its agents when it comes to protecting the innocent party. And at the end of it all, one is left asking the question what life experiences made Sweeney grow into the man he is?

So much has been said about what a strange and unlikeable character the woman, the victim, is. So little said about what a strange and unlikeable character the man, the mass murderer is. What does it say about our attitudes to how men and woman "should" behave and what levels of strangeness and unlikeability are acceptable to us?

It's a very well made programme in three parts, which don't repeat themselves too much and flow quite smoothly. But I can't help feeling that all the long distance flights and trains and so on could have easily been avoided and the planet spared unnecessary pollution with a bit of applied science. The facial recognition is fascinating and it would have been good to know more, but one DNA swab would sort it all out and then poor Mrs Berriman could have a quiet life and Tilly the cat could have a lap to sit on.

It certainly provides an interesting view of what benefits one can accrue from being well connected and having friends in high places though.