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One of Trollope's longest tomes, 'The Way We Live Now' is a tale of greed and downfall in London during the 1880's boom. It tells the tale of a visiting conman, Melmotte, who decides this time to stay in his chosen destination after having been forced to leave Vienna in haste after causing another of the financial scandals in his long career. With many characters and subplots, this is a hard book to adapt to the screen. The BBC has managed a competent interpretation nontheless, squeezing the whole thing into only five hours.

David Suchet as the protagonist, Melmotte, is excellent: a dark and charismatic foil to the foppish aristocrats who disdain all about him except his money. His daughter, Marie Melmotte, is particularly sweet. Apart from a few quirks like Mrs Hurtle's bizarre American accent (did American ladies really talk with a Jerry Hall drawl in the nineteenth century)? this is an extremely pleasing production.

A somewhat sanitised version of the Balzac classic which departs disappointingly from the original story. Jessica Lang is far too pretty a version of the downtrodden, wizened old hag Bette of the original and so conveys none of her deviousness in the many schemes to avenge herself against her condescending relatives. Missing completely from the film is arch-whore Valerie, a central character of the book's plot, who dies a grim death from a disfiguring tropical disease at the conclusion, thus removing an important moral message of the tale. Most of Balzac's other works viz. Madame Bovary, contain one of these. That said, costumes and furniture are fairly faultless which shows Hollywood has at least tried to do justice to a great book.

This film is truly abysmal, BUT if you want to see a decent French film about violence and prostitution, get 'L'Appat' out on video which is far better and more intriguing. This film is based on a real story, the main female protagonist of which is just about now eligible for parole after having served over 10 years in jail for her dark deeds.