Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Just perfect...

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's no surprise that just about everyone, in reviewing this TV mini-series, draws the very obvious parallel to "Brief Encounter". BE is still a wonderful movie but, by today's standards, it does look quite dated and, frankly, a little bit silly with its wistful looks and its secretive suggestion of illicit sex going nowhere. No surprise also therefore that a decision was made to make an updated version of that classic with, in many ways, its far more believable (but in many ways flawed) lead characters. This mini-series is wonderful and only the end lets it down.Dare I suggest that there's barely a married man alive at any time who didn't feel precisely the way Carl felt about Sally. It's a story as old as marriage itself. The romance was tender and very believable, the affair was sweet and the love was obviously genuine. SO, WHY THEN, is it never possible, in a tale such as this one, for the two characters who share the sweet romance and the love they feel to share a life together as Carl and Sally probably should have done? The final scenes with Carl back with his family and Sally in a relationship with someone other than the child's father were really not quite believable and, for me at least, were a decided let-down.It's a very fine mini-series but it is flawed only in the ending of the story it tells. It's rewarding for most of its length but, for me, a slight disappointment in the conclusion.JMV

David Nicholls' reworking of the David Lean classic shifts the action from wartime Carnforth to contemporary London. Carl Matthews (David Morrissey) and Sally Thorn (Sheridan Smith) have a chance meeting, see each other on a regular basis on the 7.39 morning train from an unspecified suburb to the center of London, and fall in love. Unlike Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in the earlier film, their love is not restricted to clandestine meetings in a station canteen, but develops into a full-blown affair. Nonetheless the outcome is much the same, as they realize that there is no future for either of them. The story is a familiar one, set against the backdrop of contemporary London - a teeming, high-tech city that alienates many of its citizens. John Alexander's direction vividly captures the heartlessness of contemporary urban life, with shots of a crowded train whose passengers seldom, if ever talk to one another, and interior shots of Carl's office, where the employees are separated from one another by glass screens. No one, it seems, has the time or the inclination to relate to one another. Thus it is perhaps inevitable that Carl and Sally should try to seek an alternative through love. Shot mainly in a series of shot/reverse shot sequences, THE 7.39 is an intense drama focusing on the characters' unspoken feelings: a close-up of Sally's tortured expression as she leaves Carl for the last time tells us far more about her pent-up emotions than dialog ever can. The casting is highly effective: Morrissey towers over Smith, suggesting that the couple are both physiognomically as well as emotionally ill-matched. Nonetheless they take full advantage of the affair while it lasts.

This is a drama about two people who have a chance meeting on a train. Both are with other people and seemingly happy but the attraction between them is too strong to resist. It follows their relationship from the platonic to the inevitable fallout from the decisions they take. In other hands this could have been a corny and cheesy mess however a brilliant cast and good direction means this is nothing but a success. It moves along at a good pace and never gets boring. I also liked the fact that it didn't paint the adulterers as awful people just normal people in a difficult situation.The main cast are all top rate actors and they don't disappoint. David Morrissey is great as the guilty husband, the fantastic Sheridan Smith is beguiling as the younger woman and Olivia Colman superb as the spurned wife. The 7.39 is a very good drama and well worth watching.

I posted the below on the boards, but it reads more like a review so here it is:I agree with Jenny and Steph, I've actually signed up to these forums just to comment on the 7.39. I'm a 31 year old manchild who rarely watches any kind of Drama and would usually at this time be playing a computer game, but after seeing Part 1 day before yesterday I had to watch part 2 on iPlayer, the interactions were intense! While I also agree with the OP that some of the situations were a bit contrived, I didn't feel any of the story 'vehicles' were egregiously out of place or overly convenient for the story being told in the format presented. With the chemistry, the initial 'lust' and 'before the act' did not seem to come through, although I like to think of it as 2 people nervously 'playing' with the idea of it and then taking the plunge much to their own surprise rather than a premeditated slow-burn; it was better done, as a tantalising game of cat and mouse, that and the fear that either Sally or Carl had 'read' things incorrectly and the whole testing the water sentiment, it would perhaps be that the chemistry was purposefully muted to show a more realistic outward picture of fear, excitement, almost taboo thought-crime, where all the lust and mental imagery was inside the characters heads before the 'release' of their first time together; showing the same kind of emotions and interactions as I am sure some of us would have felt and acted as young school kids approaching their first girlfriend or boyfriend, the whole angle of being young and lost and in new territory, as both Carl and Sally were within the idea that blossomed into the act of adultery. I thought Carl was a bit forward with the 'I think we need to acknowledge what is going on here' line when there didn't seem much more than shared flirting, but can fully accept it when thinking of how it would look to us as the voyeur viewer. The Chemistry 'showed' for the first time after they had done the deed, and only seemed to deepen with each meeting. The familiar tenderness of 'pillow talk' and opening up to each other emotionally AFTER opening up physically, I thought the chemistry was fantastic and the time they spent together, touching, call me soft but there was moisture forming at the corners of my eyes throughout that, from the pillow talk to the standing in the rain, hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and personally, some familiar territory. It seemed to fall away as you would expect as Carl's life began falling apart, it probably makes me a bad person, but I would've preferred that they ran off and lived in the seaside cottage together, giving Sally the change she wanted without the extremity of Australia and Carl the feeling of love he wanted. Throwing off the shackles of having too much to lose and responsibility. I thought the scene where they were both lying in the bed in the cottage played a fantastic parallel to Carl's life at home with Maggie, and the future would lead to the same situation should they have run off together, the certain sad inevitability of taking each other for granted and the way relationships change phases over time, for such a short scene it conveyed that amazingly well. There was a problem with Olivia Coleman's character... she was not given enough dialogue or air time, I'm no particular fan of her's but I thought she was brilliantly cast, I suppose the sparseness of 'family dialogue' showed the rut or familiarity those that have been in any kind of long, staid relationship will find familiar, and did depict well a perfectly good family life otherwise. I thought Ryan was quite a one-dimensional character, made out to be the monster and some kind of idiot neurotic tool that reminded me too much of the character 'Christian' from Eastenders. I thought he could have used a bit more softening to make him seem like someone that an intelligent, sharp, beautiful woman (who was exemplified by Sheridan Smith who has gone a LOOONG way from 'A pint of a lager and 2 packets of crisps' fame and also the last film I saw at the cinema in a long time... The Harry Hill Movie... which was actually bad despite being a Harry Hill fan), would actually even consider husband material. Sorry about the wall of text, but I felt compelled, the reason why I think the 7.39 is so great, despite being a well-worn story, is that it actually reminded me of what it was like to be in love, to be out of control, to have my brain swirl around in the intoxicating dizziness of losing control and not caring, it reminded me of past break-ups and the feeling of guilt of the time we spent together being wasted for her. I felt bliss, sadness, empathy, sympathy, guilt, fear, and being lost, all from watching a BBC 2 part drama. It's absolutely brilliant, and I want to see more.