Pretty poor stuff

To their credit, the high-brown pundits on Newsnight Review thought it was dreadful (apart from Jeanette Winterson, who loved it).

I don't think there's any need to suppose that Elyot was particularly influenced by Crash. These sorts of stories have been being told forever - Crash just won an Oscar, that's all. I guess the Oscar *is* what makes productions companies/ channels so keen to produce them.

I agree - the range of representations here was rather limited, and this also applies to those of the straight characters. In spite of this I liked it, but I'm worried that some people watching it will get an inaccurate impression about what life is like for most gay men - that we think with our dicks and not our heads, that we're destined to be alone/in denial/repressed/ostracised/paedophiles/bullied/raped/killed/beaten up/betrayed/unfaithful/drug abusers. I suppose what's really strange is that it was written by a gay man.

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Donna Lewis is a one-hit wonder but I still love her :D

Agree with jimmy_mack1973 the characters were totally repellant, badly underwritten and its aspirations to be one of those acclaimed muti-layered TV events like Tony Marchant's Falling Down were woefully underrealised.

Feel sorry for any young gay man just coming to terms with their sexuality- one look at this dross and they will probably want to hide in their bedroom for the rest of their life.

The gay man who beats people up-what his motivations was is anyones guess and as for the 40 year old predator trapped in a 15 year old's body-one of the most ghastly characters I have seen on TV for a long time.

Utterly reprehensable piece of work and if Russel T Davies was wathcing, I will send him a crowbar to unprise his toes.

The marreid man who nips in toilets, on the quite, was probably the nearest to a storyline with any dramatic tension.

This was a dreadfully depressing production. What the hell was it trying to say? Sensationalist & bleak, with gay men reduced to stereotypes. Far from celebrating 40 years of freedom, this was enough to have even well adjusted guys reaching for a bottle of pills. Total junk.

exactly what i was thinking.

Let's stop knocking CRASH for a start. CRASH was a very clever and well-made film, far superior to the tedious and distorted travesty that some straight folk made out of Ms Proux's intense little BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, which, on celluloid, became merely TWO BLOKES BONKIN'. But that's another story. CLAPHAM JUNCTION contained far more tragedy than Ang Lee's ghastly film, in that the innocent suffered, be it the sweet young waiter in the wrong place at the wrong time - often the case with the victims of gay-bashers - or the violin prodigy, showing that the script represented the SLAYING OF INNOCENTS. Americans may not know of the murder in London of Damilola Taylor, a gifted black boy, still 'unsolved' and possibly by other blacks, and Elyot MAY have been drawing on that - I don't know him -for his source. As an elderly queen of some majesty who's seen a lot
I can understand but not condone the Wilby character's reluctance to do the decent thing and the Lintern character 's seven year itch. The behaviour of Paul Nicholls, so kind to his gran, and then revealed as thuggish was truly shocking - there was tension as you feared his second pick-up may go the same way - but his eventual comeuppance was not entirely mystifying. True he could have come an unintentional cropper but there are those true sado-masochists who dish it out but also crave punishment. Honours of the evening, however, to the Treadaway/Mawle 'coupling' - in every sense. It was tense, erotic, superbly directed and acted with Luke Treadaway fairly convincing as a boy ten years younger than his true age and the deaf actor Joseph Mawle a very sexy 'victim', a reversal of the old paedo stuff. (Phoebe Nicholls' barmy mum also helped here.) If you can write, direct and perform something better than this by all means pour scorn on it. If not just button it and accept that it was a deft, if - I confess - oft overly coincidental - portrait of an England where gays, for all the laws, still suffer at the hands of bigots. Cheers from Don. PS :- If anyone wants to make a genuinely helpful contribution to this debate,can they give me Richard Lintern's birthdate, since. for the last 9 months I have been providing over a thousand birth details for this site, running rings round the thirty 'paid' professionals in the UK and every little helps. OK

I see your point, but I can't say that I agree. One's take on seeing those things presented is ultimately dependent on one's comfort level with the fact that those things DO indeed go on every day in the gay community, whether we like it or not. I agree that a lot of the plot points were contrived and overly reliant upon coincidence, but, like Crash before it, it was modeled that way on purpose to make a statement. The statement the film ultimately makes is not an easy one to digest: That gay people are just as *beep* up as the rest of the world. But what's so wrong with that? I like that these characters were presented as flawed and sort of desperate. It's a lot more real than most of the other gay movies made, where the filmmakers are always trying to paint us in the best light possible.

There were a few gay characters who did not break the law or participate in any of the activities that you had problems with, but you don't talk about them at all. You only focus on the ones who do the "bad" things. I think that says a lot more with your own level of comfort in being part of a community that isn't as perfect as we would want people to believe. Being gay means that we get to embrace all the things that make us gay, and yes, cruising in public toilets, sex in bushes, and infidelity are parts of that history and that community. It's who we are, like it or not. I, for one, am much more happy to see those things brought into the light and looked at with objectivity and tolerance, rather than judgment.

I couldn't agree more with Falconwings and Silent Protester.

I am a gay man who neither condones drugs nor visits public bathrooms for sex. I did, however, find this film utterly moving and original.

Obviously the film managed it's intention, as it has all of us thinking and discussing!

Good drama should do that. Would this be good drama if everyone loved it? Because it was "nice"?

And like the best tragedies, the effect is a kind of cleansing. It is a relief to have a good sob, don't you think?

And a happy ending would surely be an insult to all those who have suffered at the hands of a hate criminal.

I love challenging cinema like this. I loved to be moved. I love to release the emotions in the form of tears. I even love the numbness this film gave me.

I do agree it could give formatative youth the wrong impression, but then this film is for mature adults.

Well done to all involved for being brave enough to challenge us, and not conform, and to fight political-correctness. Bravo!

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Very well said locham2011, the movie was mad to shock nothing more,One must wonder who the film was made for, as the gays are not in favour of it! The characters were not fleshed out and none of them were reflected in positive light. It doesn't take a genius writer to know these things were needed to make a proper film so why wasn't it done? The producers should be ashamed for not stepping in and changing things!