Reviews

I saw this on TV back when London-area ITV would show random oddities like this late at night. In the many years since then I have occasionally come across people who have also seen it, but unsurprisingly not many. The title character prides himself on having eaten everything there is to eat in the world, and becomes gloomy when he thinks there is now nothing else to try - until an acquaintance convinces him to eat something NOT of this world.

For such a short film that I only saw once it has stuck in my mind so it must have had something going for it. I felt there was a general message of how we can always remain unsatisfied if we keep trying to push our boundaries.

By the way, something else that stuck in my mind - the IMDb entry lists Charles Gray's character as 'The Gourmet'. But the character does have a name, one of my favourite character names in fact - Manley Kingston. Somehow, that really does sound like a gourmet.

First, a warning: if you want to see this series do NOT read the earlier review entitled 'Middle-Class Angst' as its author has thoughtlessly related the entire story including all the concluding revelatory plot details and leaves you with nothing else to find out.

My comments are based on the memory of how this series struck me at the time. I haven't seen it since a repeat showing in 1983 so I'm writing this 30 years since my last viewing! The story hinges on May's marriage to a stuffy Colonel despised by her grown-up children Oliver and Elizabeth from her previous marriage. They all flee the big, cold, gloomy house he's pressured her into buying, including the Colonel's own daughter, the cripplingly shy Alice - palmed off into her own dull suburban marriage.

We then see 4 developing stories - May and the Colonel whose behaviour becomes more unsettling, Alice in her unwanted marriage, dilettante Oliver trying to find some purpose while lusting after aloof unattainable rich kid Ginny, and Elizabeth whose domestic cookery services lead her into an unexpected relationship. The idea of the series title, of things hidden, is threaded through all these stories very nicely. Through the 30-year haze I recall good performances, a compelling set of story lines, and emotional penultimate scenes. I also recall surprise that the older sister in children's comedy drama Kids From 47A had blossomed into the stunning Christine McKenna, playing insufferable trust-fund child Ginny.

I wonder what happened to David Gwylim, who played Oliver. The Gwylims were an acting family if I recall correctly. Oliver's some-time girlfriend Sukie was played by Diane Bull, who sadly died in the late 1990s at the too-young age of 46.

I'd love to see this show again. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it, as not having seen it for 3 decades it might look rubbish now. Elizabeth Jane Howard's original novel is well worth a read though. But stay away from that other review!

I enjoyed this very much and find many of the deeply negative comments here are really exaggerated. I concede there are problems with this film and yes it's pitted with plot holes, some of which irritated me, but it generally overrode these with tension, great visuals and some very good acting.

There isn't anything I can say to add to a description of the plot, pretty much everyone knows what it's about. Spielberg has opted to show everything completely from the main character's point of view and this technique works very well. And it means that some of the usual sci-fi invasion film clichés are mercifully absent, such as the gruff military commanders, stubborn government officials and argumentative scientists, simply because Ray is the focus of the story and he just doesn't encounter any of these people on his travels (though there is a minimal army presence a couple of times).

It also means that we don't get to see too much of the invaders, certainly as far as the machines they travel around in are concerned, as Ray spends most of his time running away from them. Consequently they are not over-used in the action, which makes them very effective. I found them quite unnerving, and the horrible low trumpeting noise they make really stuck in my mind. In fact, the sound effects generally are one of the film's strong points. In one of the scenes where Ray is hiding in a basement we hear them making repetitive mechanical noises but as he (and therefore we) can't see them, we have no idea what they're doing. Comparing this to other alien-invasion films, these alien machines are possibly the most scary and unsettling invaders I've seen. The creatures themselves, I agree with others, aren't so great and should have been kept partially seen at most.

The direction is as slick and skillful as you'd expect and uses a lot of upward shots to give a dizzying perspective of how immense the alien tripods are. The emergence of the first tripod is a terrific scene and very memorable, and Cruise's reactions good to watch. The overall feel of the film is one of unremitting bleakness, even before the invasion begins, save for a smidgen of schmaltz at the end. Disregard any remarks about "post-9/11 references" - yes we briefly see a wall of photos of the missing, but before 9/11 there were films about invasion threats and cities being destroyed, and there will continue to be - it doesn't necessarily have any significance.

I recently saw this as part of the London National Film Theatre's retrospective of 1970s American film. I had no knowledge of it beforehand, but what a gem this is.

It's not just a comment on beauty pageants, it also takes an incisive look at 70s American home life in everyday small towns, while examining the need to belong and fit in.

Overall though, it's very very funny, displaying a humour that is never over-the-top or played for easy laughs. This is helped by good, fluid, natural-sounding dialogue from writer Jerry Belson, and solid acting from everyone, especially Bruce Dern, Michael Kidd and Annette O'Toole.

Other things I liked included the way that the girls are often shown as the dignified ones while the (mostly male) pageant organisers and other satellite characters are shown in the opposite light, an interesting take for a film you might think is going to send up the idea of the beauty pageant mercilessly and depict the girls as nothing more than bimbos. Also, the way it neatly side-steps our possible expectation of seeing leering, lascivious men drooling over fresh young girls. There is an element of this, but it's kept to a subtle level in order to make way for better observations and more effective humour.

I highly recommend this, and if you do see it, look out for the scene where Big Bob takes his son Little Bob - for reasons I shan't bother explaining - to see a psychiatrist. I laughed more than I have at anything else for quite some time.

All the emphasis is on the look, in this BBC series about the adventures of a group of con artists.

I don't have any problem with revisiting old themes - most films and TV shows plough over the same fields as most other films & TV shows anyway. They key is, doing it effectively and producing something worth seeing. So, the idea of following the scams of these grifters is fine, but a decision was clearly taken to go down the glossy route and make it all surface. While this clearly has delighted some people, for me it just results in a superficial, cartoonish, uninvolving and unsatisfying demonstration of TV's obsession with STYLE. The reliance on "sassy" music and the grating device of having the characters address us personally drags it further down. That talking-to-the-audience thing can work if it's handled well (think House Of Cards) but here it's simply another lame tool in the programme-makers' box of tricks, that they think is going to elevate the show into something stylish and slick, in the absence of anything solid, like good plotting and decent dialogue.

Adrian Lester's a good stage actor and like many others I'm sure this will enable him to keep treading the boards. Marc Warren is a charismatic TV character actor and deserves better than this lightweight tosh. Robert Vaughn, to pick up on someone's remark earlier, is clearly there to add weight to a US sale. Pity about the bizarre three-tone hair and his indistinct, spittley diction, which makes him sound like he has seriously ill-fitting-dentures. Jaime Murray is the token sexy woman but she is very easy on the eye and her presence got me through the few eps I did see.

I'm sorry to hear it's been recommissioned. It's just the TV equivalent of a glossy magazine full of nothing but air, and god knows we've got more than enough of those.