Radio Times

Review by:

Alison Graham

There surely isn’t a better actress on television right now than Anna Maxwell Martin. She was so good as Sarah Burton in South Riding and in this super adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel, every flinch, every heart-piercing pain and ache of loss is etched across that little face.

Paula Milne (no slouch as a writer herself, she was behind the marvellous The Politician’s Wife) has done a magnificent job of bringing Waters’ novel, with all of its narrative quirks (the story is told backwards), to the screen. Maxwell Martin is Kay, an auxilliary ambulance driver in the Second World War who is transformed by the routine horrors of conflict; the “mortuary runs” with bomb-blasted bodies, the indiscriminate killing.

Kay is a lesbian, and her romantic feelings, in public, have to be confined to no more than glances and gestures. In a multi-layered narrative we see other women forced to hide their true selves behind facades of heterosexual domesticity, like “flatmates” Julia and Helen (Anna Wilson-Jones and Claire Foy). Then there’s silly, trusting Viv (Jodie Whittaker) and her tormented gay brother Duncan (Harry Treadaway). All of these characters are woven into an elegant, overlapping narrative.

About this programme

One-off drama adapted from the best-selling novel by Sarah Waters, following the love affairs of four Londoners throughout three stages of the 1940s. Kay roams the streets, haunted by a traumatic personal loss, while Helen and Viv run a marriage bureau, helping people rebuild their shattered lives by finding love - but their own complicated relationships are less easy to solve. Meanwhile, Duncan's fragile existence is threatened when a face from his past reappears. Anna Maxwell Martin, Claire Foy, Jodie Whittaker and Harry Treadaway star.

Cast and crew

Cast

Kay Langrish

Anna Maxwell Martin

Helen Giniver

Claire Foy

Vivian Pearce

Jodie Whittaker

Julia Standing

Anna Wilson-Jones

Duncan Pearce

Harry Treadaway

Robert Fraser

JJ Feild

Reggie Nigri

Liam Garrigan

Nancy Carmichael

Claudie Blakley

Horace Mundy

Kenneth Cranham

Crew

Director

Richard Laxton

Producer

Ann Tricklebank

Writer

Paula Milne

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