Jonathan Dore Stephen Poliakoff seems to have got into a bit of a rut: although he is rightly praised for creating characters with interesting quirks in their history and personality, almost all his recent dramas seem to revolve around very wealthy -- or at least socially advantaged -- people, usually eccentric, for whom giving or attending parties, or talking about parties they used to attend, or remembering overhearing other people reminisce about parties they attended, forms an improbably large proportion of their waking thoughts. Frankly it's beginning to seem formulaic. With all this partying, perhaps Mr P. needs to stay in more?Here the eccentric, hugely wealthy party-giver is Paul Reynolds, who develops a fixation with employing, then serially disappointing, a bright and efficient young secretary, Lizzie. It's insinuated that he has business genius and a farsighted understanding of emerging trends, but we're not really given enough evidence to tell if that aura is really deserved. Written in 2004/5 (I think?), Paul's late-80s prediction that bookshops with integral cafés were the big thing of the future might have looked prescient -- a prescience the writer seems to contrast with Lizzie's later employer's crash in the dot-com bubble. Yet half a decade on, with Borders gone and Waterstones just hanging on, who can say that big bookshops with cafés were the canny choice, compared to internet retailing? The future has turned round and bitten the author back.Paul is presented as enigmatic, but that largely seems down to the deep-frozen glint in Damien Lewis's eye, which could equally be interpreted as psychotic. Given the air of perpetual menace that surrounds him -- at least from the catastrophic garden party onwards -- it's hard to believe that Lizzie would even have agreed to have lunch with him again, let alone offered him work. His motivation is utterly opaque: What made him want to trash his own party? What made him indifferent -- even seemingly happy about -- the destruction of Lizzie's and his own hard work on his various projects during the party? What made him deliberately undermine Lizzie at the agency by doing no work for 5 months? Once his money had gone, frankly, why would any of his former associates give such a man the time of day?

ennor I can usually appreciate a good Poliakoff TV drama, but this one left me cold and even disinterested. I normally enjoy Damian Lewis's work as well, but his rather detached Paul left me not caring at all about what became of him; the quirky and enigmatic smile became irritating and more importantly, conveyed nothing at all. I felt that Jodhi May held the whole thing together; she seemed to have been written as the point-of-view character through whose eyes we see the ebb and flow of Paul's life, whilst at the same time we observe her rise and rise in the business world, something the self-sabotaging Paul could only envy.Poliakoff generally sets his stories against a backdrop of historical social and political change. In 'Friends & Crocodiles' the social change covers the time from the hedonistic 1980's to the bursting of the dot com bubble. For me, I felt somewhat irrelevant as a viewer as the narrative dipped in and out of events in time. I believe that Poliakoff was too ambitious in attempting to create a cohesive story covering this time span in only 110 minutes of screen time. The reasons for the shortness of story-telling time may well have been financial - or whatever - but for me, this movie just didn't work, and in the end I didn't care what happened to any of the characters.I really, really love Stephen Poliakoff's work, but I hope 'Friends & Crocodiles' remains the sole exception.

revenga I too had seen the many trailers the BBC had put out for this drama and being a fan of Robert Lindsay and Damien Lewis (and Jodhi May in Last of the Mohicans) i was expecting something quite special from auntie.What i got was a story that lacked substance (and much of a plot) and was told using huge jumps into the future followed by or preceded by lines like "i haven't spoken to Paul in 6 years..." and a deep and meaningful look.There was no real character development and i was confused as to how Poliakoff, Jodhi May and Damian Lewis had managed to make the leads so successfully unlikeable.As I mentioned above I like both of them in other projects but in this I thought they were unforgivable. Even the normally sublime Robert Lindsay shuffled about looking out of place - which just emphasises how badly written his part was.I really wanted to like this and had been quite excited - planning an evening in with a friend to enjoy the rarity of drama in a world of Big Brother and Strictly Dance on Ice (or whatever). The sad thing is that Big Brother might have been better entertainment...Verdict: Easily missable - I should have gone to the pub instead.

Rich (freeboprich-1) This is most definitely one of the most affecting dramas I have seen in the past year, both casting and the expertise of the setting and prop crew were flawless. Honestly, I might be credulous, but the intended chronology of the film was exceptionally convincing, it did to an extent make me wish that more detail had been shown about the in-between periods that the narration had passed by, the characters were so intense that I felt pulled in by their stories and anything could have been relevant. It goes without saying that as a fan of Jodhi May as well as of the creator, I had been looking forward to this for some time and there was no disappointment apart from what I already mentioned. On the whole there's more in the way of emotional turbulence than joyful interludes, but the overall message is delightful and has effected me profoundly. My thanks to all involved.