First let me declare an interest. I am a screenwriter. When I first started I used to imagine my lines being spoken by the actors I loved, ie the great actors. I soon learnt to change my ways. In this film, Alan Sharp has written pages and pages of dialogue which can only be delivered by top class actors. It's a huge risk: but that's what we like in this business - a man who puts his cojones on the block. Fortunately, the actors are top class and they do deliver. Sam Neill is, in my view, turning into a great actor before our eyes. First he breathed life into Cardinal Wolsey: and in this film he's even better. Honourable mention must also go to Baron Dunsany's book. Question for budding screenwriters: how many similar books are out there waiting to be discovered? Criteria for inclusion: pre-war (therefore out of copyright), popular in their time, unashamedly commercial rather than great literature. It's no use looking in bookshops: these books are all out of print and the writers forgotten. Second honourable mention goes to Screen East, for backing this subtle and tasteful and surprising story about repressed grief. It's one of the perennial themes and all the bangs and explosions and robots in the world won't make it go away.
Review of Dean Spanley
