What a waste of my time!!!

Really Surprised!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Yes, "Mystery" does vary in tone from other works by Dickens but not nearly to this extent. The whole movie plays like a sweaty dream induced by a night of heavy eating and drinking. It utterly lacks the feeling of concrete reality that Dickens somehow evokes even as he spins ludicrous tales.Not a single character feels like a real person with a real life beyond what appears on screen and a full range of emotions. There's never a hint that the choirmaster runs a choir, or that the lawyer has ever handled a case or that the schoolgirl has any studies.The very talented Matthew Rhys is wasted on a role with only two notes, hatred and self pity. But it's still the deepest role in the show. None of the other characters has more than one characteristic and many of them have none at all. Oddly, despite this lack of personality (or perhaps because of it) all of the characters are unlikable. There's no one to root for in the story.To make up for the lack of character, there is mood, lots of mood, hitting you in the face again and again with dream sequences and funny camera angles and music that is supposed to make us fearful in moments that are not scary to anyone older than 5.The production isn't even technically competent in a way you'd expect of the BBC. Rhys, who is great with accents and can surely do an English one, frequently reverts to his native Welsh. In one scene, they say the Lord's prayer as "Our Father, Who art..." rather than "Which art," which would have been used in Victorian England. It's a miracle a car did not drive through the background in one of the scenes.The worst adaptation of Dickens I have ever seen.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is both captivating and frustrating, captivating in its tension and suspense as well as the titular character and frustrating in its incompleteness. This adaptation is not perfect but does nobly with its source material. It does suffer from incompleteness(the book doesn't help) and its contrived and abrupt ending. But it is very handsomely filmed and remarkably authentic to the period it's set in, while the score is unobtrusive and hauntingly beautiful. The dialogue is carefully and intelligently adapted, making an effort to sound Dickenesian and not too contemporary, also nobly developing the characters in rich detail. The story is tense and suspenseful, with some good twists and turns and very compelling storytelling, more so in the first half admittedly. It is a very well-performed adaptation too, Matthew Rhys steals the show, intense and heartfelt it is a brilliant performance. Freddie Fox shows command of the Dickenesian language, Tamzin Merchant is appealingly pert and Rory Kinnear, Ian McNeise, Julia MacKenzie and Alun Armstrong turn in strongly dependable performances too. In conclusion, solid and very well-done especially for the performances. 8/10 Bethany Cox

I just finished watching this film for the second time--and it is a film with production values equal to anything you could pay to see in a theater. I'm a former Dickens buff who gradually turned my attentions to Wilkie Collins; and what many reviews fail to mention is the extreme likeness between this 2012 adaptation and The Moonstone, the "crossing-over" of Dickens from crowd-pleaser to a man who might just have written one final novel for his own pleasure (as his former friend Collins always seems to have done). There is no shame in the character of John Jasper, something Matthew Rhys reveals with restraint. Rhys is excellent in being his very own doppelganger, to the extent that the viewer wonders if opium actually prevents his Jasper from being even more malignant. He deserves attention at awards' time for his portrayal of the nauseating convergence of guilt and agony.Ms. Hughes' strength *is* Jasper, whom she knows is a descendant of the striving middle-class hypocrites that Dickens was so good at, beginning with Jonas Chuzzlewit, then (most famously) with Uriah Heep, and--right before The Mystery of Edwin Drood--most menacingly with Bradley Headstone. As another reviewer points out, Rhys' Jasper captures the sexual menace of Headstone in a creepy, truly frightening, way. Of course some of Ms. Hughes' twenty-first century sensibilities are evident in Jasper's open sexual aggression toward Rosa, but the viewer can't help but suspect that this honesty would have been EXACTLY what Dickens would have wanted, if he had lived to finish the work. Years ago, a critic said that the novel had a feel of being written from beyond the grave. It is a palpably autumnal work that can make a reader or viewer wonder if Dickens' death was caused by his inability be as frank about the sexual aggression of his anti-hero as Wilkie Collins never had any trouble being at all.Hughes has an unerring instinct for what is and isn't Dickensian, including the recurrent--and disturbing--older man/younger woman couple (Crisparkle and Helena), the village idiot politicians, and the cruelty of the class system. This novel is set in a Hardyan place, and so there are no Southwark Nancy's or abused Jo's. Hughes showed a sensitivity to the thematic Dickensian staple--London--by making the character Edwin Drood perhaps more racist and callous than Dickens would have made him, thereby bringing sordid London into the countryside. Freddie Fox' portrayal is a pretty raw portrait of the Dickens' "cad."Shame, that this movie has not received the media and academic attention it deserves, because this was clearly a labor of love. Bravo--a perfect 10.

I haven't read The Mystery of Edwin Drood yet and it has now moved up the list of Dickens books that I want to read. I'd love to see where he left off and where the screenwriter had to fill in the gaps. From that standpoint, I have nothing to say about how this production was adapted.This was a brilliant production, however. Matthew Rhys was astounding - at the beginning of the first part his character had some moments of charisma (well, one, perhaps when he was singing to the choir and demonstrating flat and sharp keys) but this didn't last when he spiralled downwards into his obsessions and became a truly awful character but very sympathetic at the same time. Truly rounded.On an aesthetic note, some costume dramas have distractingly bad hair (I loved Sandy's Welch's Jane Eyre but Toby Stephen's hair was not good for example) - 'Drood' has none of this - I completely believed everyone's appearance and was not distracted by poor hairpieces for once (minor point but I wanted to praise that aspect!).Another notable point about this production was the sound. It was more creative than any other costume drama I can remember - some of the audio had me guessing whether they were original sound recordings from the church or a post-production echo chamber - I really couldn't tell the difference. Then the audio-montages that accompanied the more drug- induced scenes were creatively mixed and really took me into the aural world of 'Drood'.I absolutely loved this. Thank you once again, BBC.