Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

chrislally We enjoyed the production, the filming and actors were excellent though we thought it a bit slow. I became interested in the locations because of a book I was reading that mentioned there had never been a "Great Southern Railway" so the main line railway station with that title was a bit of a mystery. The station building and interior appears to be Kelvinhall Art Gallery in Glasgow, presumably with some CGI to change the name on the building. The opulent "embassy" staircase seems to be Glasgow City Hall, and the "Windsor Castle" ship seen at the docks looks like the ship purchased in 2014 by the Royal Yacht Britannia organisation, so are the docks buildings at Leith?

shozzas15 This has only the vaguest connection to the book. The names are the same, just about everything else has been modified out of all recognition. Coincidentally I read the book a few weeks ago. It's a subtle & quite unnerving book, a black comedy really, with no heroes, just people enmeshed in a fallen world of deceit & corruption.There's very little dialogue, until near the end, when it all bursts like a suppurating boil. This obviously makes it difficult to adapt, but is no excuse for wholesale butchery; frankly if that's the best the adaptor can do he'd best just leave it. The acting was OK, but there was some poor casting. Overall a waste of everyone's time.

pawebster It's a strange and unconvincing story, but it has its points of interest, as it deals with the murky late Victorian world of mysterious anarchists. Unfortunately, this BBC version is not very well done. The main problem is that it is too slow and does not flow. Stephen Graham has a difficult part as Inspector Heat, whose doings and motivations are often obscure. Why he further encumbers this with a heavy Scouse accent is one of the mysteries of the series (I know he's from Liverpool, but he's good at accents). As for Vicky McClure, what is her accent? It's unrelated to the speech of the rest of her screen family and also seems anachronistic to me (too many glottal stops and -d- for -t- in places). Is it that she is just using her own accent (and does she perhaps do so in every part she gets)?

s3276169 The Secret Agent based on Joseph Konrad's work of the same name, for me at least, is rather uninspiring and badly dated. This series, on first view, feels like a "dull artifact" that expresses stale, somewhat paranoid sentiments, from a bygone era. Unlike similar series, such as Reilly Ace of Spies, there's nothing overly exciting on offer here. Reilly beautifully captured the essence of an early period of political intrigue and built an enjoyable tale around it. By contrast, The Secret Agent, simply feels like a proxy for the exhumed opinions of long dead political elites, afraid of the Communist bogey man. The acting in this series and production values, as is often the case in the UK, are of a high standard. Its not for me, the performances, that are in question, however. The whole proposition seems anachronistic, when filtered through 21st century eyes. The Secret Agent, might have worked as a satire or adapted to a comedic format but, as serous drama, to me, it feels like an absurdity. Five out of ten.