blanche-2 "The Shadow in the North" is one of those films that, even though it is set in another time, has a modern feel to it. It's not quite up to Masterpiece Mystery standards.Former singer Billie Piper, a beautiful young woman and a fine actress, is Sally Lockhart. Sally is an investment adviser, but one of her clients has gone broke thanks to her advice. A ship with the commodities she invested in on board disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Lloyds of London refused to settle her claim.Sally promises the woman that she will get every cent of her money back. She goes to see the ship owner, Axel Bellmann (Jared Harris), and demands that he return the money. He refuses.Sally asks her friends, Fred Garland and Jim Taylor, who are detectives, to investigate for her. Bellmann turns out to be a ruthless arms merchant who has developed a steam gun that is very powerful and can be used against civilians.Someone suggested that this movie is for young viewers and hence, the modern touches. Sally is a very independent and free-thinking woman who looks about as if she belongs in the Victorian era about as much as Miley Cyrus does. The full lips, the lack of deportment, her plain speaking, her boldness - not of the era. Also she's not a big one for wearing hats. Ethnic types abound and seem to be accepted by society. I have to to think all of this was to make it palatable to teenagers. I have no objection to that - it's a well acted if confusing story (magicians and spiritualists play a role in the plot as well), and Sally is indeed all about girl power. I would love to see Billie Piper in something else, maybe something truly modern.

Peter Boots (pboots) It is sad when an excellent cast is wasted in something quite as preposterous as this.Imagine a late Victorian London where a near teenage young lady styles herself a 'Financial Consultant', and sinks a retired school teacher's entire retirement savings in a shipping line that goes bankrupt after its ship -- apparently the only one -- mysteriously disappears at sea on a calm day.The plucky financial consultant resolves to retrieve the retirement funds, and begins investigating in a culturally thoroughly modern, multicultural London, as if maybe the screen writer and casting director had failed to notice the Victorian settings and worked a modern script, while everybody else did their best to recreate Victorian London without paying attention to the incongruities and anachronisms of the script.Throw in mediums, psychic visions, mysterious foreigners, dastardly businessmen, surprisingly unintimidating goons, secret weddings, and love affairs that are so complicated that even the cast seems quite unable to work out who is involved with whom until the very end.Fans of Philip Pullman's 'Sally Lockhart' books may not mind any of it, but this movie will leave the uninitiated puzzled as to their success.

Neil Doyle In THE SHADOW IN THE NORTH, BILLIE PIPER is an implausible choice to play a Victorian lass who is so bold, sensual and modern looking that she makes all the authentic detail look hopelessly jarring because she's so 21st Century in appearance and manner. On the other hand, JARED HARRIS is completely convincing as an evil industrialist who has taken charge of a destructive machine designed to be the ultimate weapon.Piper is menaced by this evil tycoon from the very start but matches him for boldness every step of the way. He comes to admire her gutsy behavior (especially for a Victorian woman), and therein lies his downfall. Instead of agreeing to marry him, she has revenge on her mind for the way he has engineered the death of her sweetheart.It's an interesting story, a bit convoluted in the manner in which it unfolds, but heavy with Victorian atmosphere and settings.An enjoyable mystery, nicely played by most of the cast, but I found the whole story somewhat disconcerting because BILLIE PIPER looked and acted entirely too modern.

adelaide-9 I was somewhat worried that this episode might deviate too far from the original book, especially as "The Shadow in the North" is my favourite of the Sally Lockhart quartet. However, I was pleasantly surprised, it stuck extremely close to the book and really brought Philip Pullman's creation to life. The acting was superb, Billie Piper as the Financial Consultant-cum- detective Sally Lockhart was very convincing as the feisty, yet vulnerable young woman who is pulled into a dark underworld of corruption and murder. Equally, Jared Harris as evil tycoon Axel Bellman was great- understated yet chilling, just as Pullman envisaged him. I can't fault the script or pace of it either, it was gripping but managed to obtain the essence of dialogue/ storyline without leaving out anything significant, and some adaptations might tend to do. Overall, highly enjoyable and entertaining, a worthy adaptation of Pullman's great story!