I was lucky enough to go to a screening of this last night, and it's great. Much darker, I thought, than Perfect Strangers/Shooting etc, and David Walliams is very oppressive. Ruth did a good job as the younger Maggie, and Maggie herself...well, what could I say but something trite and unworthy. She's just Fab.
shareIts crap! Empty, bland rubbish story telling.
shareI sort of missed the ending. I had no idea what it was about, was he real? Why did he ask her for help?? I really don't get it, can someone explain!!
shareI'm really curious too! I thought it was good, as expected I found it well written and brilliantly directed...very creepy too. But its really left me pondering, what was the film trying to say? I'd love to hear what other people thought of it! ^_^
shareI really liked that they never explained who he really was. I totally think he was a ghost...but maybe only a ghost in her own mind. She'd let herself be oppressed by him, and that was what made him alive.
'Ford, you're turning into a penguin! stop it!'
A very good production with great acting and a haunting soundtrack. I don't think we should take the story too literaly, this was more a metaphor for post war Britain. Greville was the old order, the age of defference losing his power and influence in the new age of the 60's. Mary herself is the face of that change, feisty and unwilling to look at the past but to the future.
Then of course there is a whole feminist interpretation, pre and post war, class ridden and classless.
Well, anyway these were my intepretations of this wonderful production.
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I think it was supposed to be the devil as someone above said, thats how he knew about the bad things people had done and had so much power over people.
It also explains why he didn't age.
He must have been real e.g. physically there as Marys boyfriend comented on who the guy was at one point and at the 60's party someone told him he was talking crap so i dont think it was how she saw her self, a figment of her drink adled mind or anything like that. (She only started drinking later on anyway).
Well I sort of missed the beginning...can anyone tell me what happened between Mary and Greville to turn Mary into the quivering wreck she became? Thanks!
shareI found her statement near the end about remembering what Greville had said about seeing yourself as other people see you quite poignant, though wasn't exactly sure why. I thought when she said that that Greville was actually herself and when she mostly saw him within his interactions with other people that she was actually seeing someone she had created as being the way other people saw her.
HOWEVER, then the last 20 minutes kind of threw out that explanation for me so I don't know!!
Greville the Devil? Inner or other wise.
shareI watched this program, and was deeply enthralled the entire time...but I have no clue what I should have gotten out of it. All performances were exquisite - yes, indeed, David Walliams was EERIE - but I'm really not sure why the story needed to be told.
Was Mary ruined from this man? was he real? was he a figment of her imagination/creativity? If so, was he only a way of passing off blame so as not to accept her responsibility in her life events?
Or, as one person mused, does he represent old establishment versus modern times and interests? I like this one best....but then I am still puzzled about his physicalness. Did she go down to the wine cellar herself? The letter Liza gives her, did it exist?
As much as I puzzle over Greville, I did in fact enjoy watching the show...very entrancing, with spellbinding performances all around. Sorry I don't help solve anything here for anyone else...I think I'll need to see it again and find more clues.
It didn't really do anything for me I'm afraid - some great performances by the actors but a rather dull story (such as it was).
Not as good as Joe's Palace and not a patch on Shooting the Past or Perfect Strangers.
Yes have to agree and what were the casting bods thinking in putting David Walliams in it?? I know who I would have cast as Greville and he would have been excellent - Sam West. Liked both Marys though, DMS was fantastic as always.
sharewhat were the casting bods thinking in putting David Walliams in it??Very modish casting. Of course Sam West is a real actor. Sadly, as far as I'm concerned, Walliams is only an... impersonator. He adopts postures, but doesn't project a personality. It needed someone who could embody that older age, had something of the easy (and a bit sleexy) patrician air. Walliams simply couldn't do that. And so this central character lacked the weight and force it needed. Nevertheless, I thought the writing was as much at fault, so even Sam West would have been up against it. The big revelations: that the ruling classes were racist, anti-semitic and had nasty sexual fetishes is hardly a surprise to anyone now, so the the dramatic pivot of the piece lacked any real power.
I must say that I thought Walliams was suitably arrogant, condescending and chilling for the role of Greville. Since I'm in the States, I haven't seen him in anything else that might have served to typecast him, thereby shortchanging his performance.
The dramatic pivot, IMO, was when he offered Mary his key and she turned him down. His power is on the wane though he may not know it yet. She thinks hers is on the upswing but she's wrong too. In either case, their lives are both about to change.
Over time Mary becomes lost in the psychological matrices of her own mind, still traumatized by this unsettling event of her past. I think her original meeting with Greville is quite real, not a figment of alcohol induced dementia. Mary’s inability to understand his overtures, and respond to them in the way he’s accustomed result in his becoming vindictive. It’s a scenario many career women of a certain age have seen happen, if not to themselves, then to others.
As Mary’s career is stymied, she loses confidence and ultimately settles for less than she aspired to when she began. Years later she’s looking back and trying to understand where it all went wrong, something both men and women of a certain age often do. Whether she contributed to her own downtrodden situation or not, the fact remains her ego is still taking a beating. What she sees in the park, haunted memories and what if's, are a product of her inability to come to grips with her misfortunes and move on.
There are lots of classist implications. She’s a carpenter’s daughter from Manchester who works hard to lose her accent so she can hobnob with the socially prominent movers and shakers, who in her new found sophistication she looks down upon. But when Greville still wields sufficient power to put her in her place, she can’t muster the means to counter the attack. She spends the rest of her life staying in her place, believing perhaps that this is 'what she gets' for bucking the status quo a bit before such activity became commonplace.
Because of changes in the economic and social climate of the country, she might have been poised to do more as others did (witness the guy at the party who tells Greville he’s full of it). In the end Mary Gilbert is trying finally to rid herself of her nemesis, her own psychological distress. Self-created as it is, she might be able to do it and find some peace.
Needless to say I found the production fascinating and will probably have to watch it several more times before I can appreciate all its nuances, a circumstance I wish happened more often with television drama on both sides of the pond.
Nice analysis Timberbutte - Judging from Poliakoff's interviews on TV and in the press, I feel that there is quite a bit of allegory here - Greville representing the Establishment and Mary the force of change, but she is premature by about 10 years. Sadly, what ever course she took at that moment in time would be doomed one way or the other. Either she ended up as she did, or as an appendage to Greville and his kind.
Mary is also a bit of an unreliable narrator - having turned to alcohol, and (as implicated) drugs (LSD, Speed) in the 60's. So her '60's encounters with "Greville" may have been real to her, but drug induced. There also is some evidence for LSD "flashbacks" long after the person has stopped using the drug. (check through WIKI on the effects of LSD...they seem to tally)
I found the play (it is a play, more like theatre than TV) gripping, and very sad. It is a pity that some of the critics were so dismissive. However I think it will be one of those productions which will stand the test of time.
Like you, I'll be watching this a few times more (and the accompanying piece "A Real Summer")
Would agree with your comparison to theater. I think Poliakoff is on record as saying he tries to slow television down. Tough to do once the horse is out of the barn which is why I think so many critics lose patience. I really admire Poliakoff's effort to serve his art, and that he thinks television has a place for it. We as viewers are all the better for it.
While I felt the story quite poignant, I felt in the end Mary might finally be seeing the light. She can't go back and reclaim those lost years but perhaps she'll find some peace, so I saw some reason for hope.
~~~~~There are lots of classist implications. She’s a carpenter’s daughter from Manchester who works hard to lose her accent so she can hobnob with the socially prominent movers and shakers, who in her new found sophistication she looks down upon. But when Greville still wields sufficient power to put her in her place, she can’t muster the means to counter the attack. She spends the rest of her life staying in her place, believing perhaps that this is 'what she gets' for bucking the status quo a bit before such activity became commonplace.~~~~~
Greville was a bit like Mephistopheles. He tempted her as a test, since she was at the threshold of the boss class (by work rather than heredity). She rejected him, leaving the cellar full of tempting wines and revolting anecdotes (= id) and again when he offered the key (bedroom upstairs = ego) but was sufficiently tempted to be a hanger-on for a while, with the painter etc. After that, what happened in her life, was what would have happened to Faust if he hadn't done the deal, she loses out to the procession of people who are like her, the flow of new talent which she was part of - only Greville seems immune to that, although not entirely. She may have mourned the life she didn't have but hadn't noticed that it wasn't worth having, except perhaps towards the end (all the way upstairs in the attic = superego) and with the book as we see her on the outside of the building (a folly?) surrounded by symbols of death - leafless trees, being passed-by by the child and woman, interesting only to a stranger rather than family members....
Grevile also rather reminded me of the characters who pop up in Evelyn Waugh novels (like Father Rothschild in Vile Bodies) who seem to know everyone and have been everywhere and to be involved in everything nefarious. He didn't wear a green bowler hat though. ;O)
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.