the audience applauded

hyped garbage

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This was a dark story. Never one minute of happiness. Everyone in the movie was a horrible person except Mary. I wondered how bad was Ned that she would live in scalor and watch ppl be murdered instead of returning to marry her friend Ned. I never saw or understood why she felt anything for Jem although Matt is a handsome actor. Now the real mystery was why nasty Patience ever agreed to take her into this scum bag life or why she was so devoted to her horrible husband. I suppose at the end where they were kissing and talking about an egg he bought her i was supposed to be touched after watching him drown an entire ship full of men. No not feeling it. Did not care one bit for either. Both should hang. They were all scum of the earth.

Very beautiful adaptation of the Du Maurier classic novel to a TV mini-series. There is a reason why Hitchcock directed this back in 1939. The atmosphere set is hypnotic at times. The music is well-chosen. It sets the right mood. When I first read the book, I imagined the setting to be similar but not quite as beautiful as shown here.The actors did quite a formidable job in this. Especially the supporting cast: Whalley, Harris (mumbling or not, his presence and portrayal of the character is nothing short of excellent), Shirley Henderson is great as ever. Jessica B-F is very talented and fits into the role of the main protagonist. A young girl, not too beautiful, but determined to go her own path, despite the obstacles life's put in her way. All in all, a great effort, in my opinion and I imagine the cost of making it wasn't as high as with many other TV productions nowadays. It's good to see that the BBC hasn't lost its touch when it comes to adapting a classic novel for the small screen. One more thing, the average rating is too low, out of reasons I cannot comprehend. Just doesn't appeal to anyone, I guess. 7.3/10

It's a reasonable stab at a great tale, but sadly this latest version of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn takes too many television shortcuts to satisfy and really impress. That's a shame, because there is a lot about it which makes it stand out from what another production might have settled for.Effort and imagination went in to making the story very much of its time and although the various Cornish accents are at times a little off (I live there - here - and can tell, although I'm not myself Cornish), it does take you back to the early years of the 19th century when life was not half as sweet as it is now for most of us. OK it has been castigated for several anachronisms, but if you are not aware of them - and I was not - they won't spoil your viewing. I rather liked the acting, too, and thought it well cast. Where it falls down is in the pretty mediocre script and storytelling: where subtle exposition and greater characterisation were needed, we got, instead, the pretty usual two-dimensional TV version good and evil. This was storytelling by numbers. In fact, the storytelling was pretty slapdash.Too much was left unexplained. What hold did the Vicar of Altarnun have over Joss Merlyn which so ensnared him to his will? And why did the Vicar stick to the pretence of being a man of God. Surely it was more than just needing a 'good cover story'? And what drove him to lead a gang of wreckers in the first place? It cannot have been merely for venal gain, because he seems wholly uninterested in it.It was the kind of inner detail which this version needed but which it lacked to make it something special. As it is it serves well as a piece of TV fodder and in many ways is better than much we are presented with. It's just a shame BBC couldn't - or couldn't be bothered to - go that extra mile.

I love Cornwall, I go there all the time, and I have never had any trouble understanding the delightful Cornish accent. So what in God's name is the language they're speaking in BBC1′s new adaptation of Jamaica Inn? I began by turning up the volume, thinking I simply had the TV on too quietly. When I still couldn't catch what most of the cast were trying to say I tried listening on headphones like a language student struggling to revise for a forthcoming aural exam.But however much I concentrated, rewound on TiVo, or adjusted the audio controls I could only manage to pick out about one word in fifty.Most inaccessible of all was the dialogue uttered by Sean Harris, as violent, drink-soaked smuggler Joss.Joss produced a baffling array of mumbles, whispers and grunts, delivered through the upper nasal cavity in a West Country accent so thick it might as well have been first generation Klingon.Even headstrong barmaid Mary – played by Jessica Brown Findlay off Downton Abbey – had trouble understanding the ramblings of her thuggish, inebriated uncle, and pointed out as much on more than one occasion."I don't understand," she said at one point, and Britain breathed a huge sigh of relief that not every viewer in the country had simultaneously gone deaf.Uncle Joss turned out to be a bit of a nineteenth century Basil Fawlty – a reluctant innkeeper who "don't like people staying," and would rather go down to the beach and crush people's heads with his bare hands. He also had a nasty habit of grabbing people around the throat and shoving them up against walls – a style of behaviour that was also reminiscent of Mr Fawlty at his least hospitable.Matthew McNulty was in it, of course. He's in all the BBC costume dramas and probably hasn't had a day off work in about 7 years. Poor old Matthew must be sick to the back teeth of heavily colour-corrected, windswept moors full of clattering stage coaches and women wading up to their knees in muddy bogs. He looks like he could do with a couple of weeks in the Canaries. Maybe his agent needs to learn how to say "no" from time to time.Finally giving up on trying to follow the dialogue, I turned my attentions to Mary's heavy, full length velvet dress. This character's fondness for bog wading at a variety of different depths meant that in every scene the dark stain around the hem of this garment moved up and down, up and down, like the rise and fall of the tidal Thames at Teddington. I eventually found myself trying to guess at which level the watermark would appear next, and I have every intention of turning this pastime into a drinking game while I am watching episode 3 of Jamaica Inn (with the subtitles turned on.)