Categories Lucky Jim Print Media Reviews

Masterpiece Theatre cracks a smile with the charming “Lucky Jim”

Get “Lucky”

by Don Dale | January 1, 2003 | Style Weekly

PBS-TV’s next “Masterpiece Theatre” broadcast, “Lucky Jim,” is a winsomely charming comedy, likeable for a number of solid reasons. Chief among them is the story, based on a book by Kingsley Amis; the two main characters, played by Stephen Tompkinson and Keeley Hawes; and the nostalgic 1950s soundtrack.

Amis created quite a stir in British literary circles when “Lucky Jim” was published in 1954. First called an angry young man, Amis quickly established himself instead as a master of satire, malcontented rather than irate. His target was the intellectual milieu and those who wallowed in it, and the eponymous hero of “Lucky Jim” was something new: a working-class man, well-educated but unapologetically middlebrow.

Continue reading Masterpiece Theatre cracks a smile with the charming “Lucky Jim”

Categories Dead Gorgeous Print Media

Dead Gorgeous Review

Wartime Friends Trapped in Loveless Relationships

by Owen G | The Guardian | October 22, 2002

ITV’s heavily promoted one-off wartime drama, Dead Gorgeous, starring Fay Ripley, left viewers cold last night with 1.5 million switching off during the course of the programme.

The two-hour epic, in which Ripley co-starred with Helen McCrory as a pair of wartime friends trapped in loveless relationships, started off with 6.6 million viewers at 9pm.

But by 10.15pm, the number watching had dipped to 4.8 million, leaving the drama with an average of 5.5 million viewers, one in four of all those watching.

Read the rest of the original article at The Guardian