One of the worst costume drama's I've seen in years! The acting was terrible. the script was terrible, the screenplay was dull and the characters seem like they had been plucked out of the 21st century and thrown back in time! Laura Fraser was useless, good looking, but useless. She plays the strong modern woman type which is totally out of context for the time, and all the male characters are weak.The only saving grace for this movie is the filming location of Croxteth Hall in Liverpool, which I used to visit quite frequently as a boy living in Liverpool,UK.So... bad acting, bad script, and awful characters with poor delivery! anyone who loves true to life accurate historical films will be shocked and disgusted! anyone who has no clue or doesn't care about history, especially English history, may see it in a more entertaining light.Americans will love it!

I found the whole presentation to have the subtle influence of a Merchant/Ivory effort. Norman Stone's direction has taken a glossier feel with this production.Whether or not through intention, Stone has created a tacit contrast and balance between today's perceptions of modern medicine and the historic resonance of its bitter foundations. Through this, the film breathes with a certain relevance without feeling preachy or overly dry.Laura Fraser plays the part of Florence with a sort of volcanic fragility while staying true to the linguistic delivery style of the period. Other noteworthy efforts are delivered by Michael Pennington. Pennington conveys a realistic father void of the typical Victorian film noir caricatures that have all too often plagued period films. Editor Colin Goudie keeps the patent BBC presentation while allowing the film to feel at times like a larger screen effort. Composer Jeremy Soule delivers what may be the best opening theme in recent history for the BBC.If there is anything of fault with the film is that some important elements were implied rather than filmed. This may have been symptomatic of budgeting considerations with a production of this nature. It would have been nice to see more of Florence's life in this script, as an hour made the whole production feel slightly compressedIn conclusion, this film is a very worthy way to spend an hour for those that know nothing about the legendary Florence Nightingale. This may be the finest effort thus far to bring this story to the screen.

I found this production very entertaining. It's style was not unlike 'Oh, What A Lovely War', interspersing the real life drama ,with music-hall scenes, brilliantly led by Roy Hudd. Laura Fraser was excellent in the role of Florence Nightingale , showing her as a feisty yet tender character. Michael Pennington ,as Wen Nightingale was also well cast and he played his part with great sympathy. A special mention for a fine newcomer, Zoe Street-Howe, who's performance as the young Queen Victoria, I found most believable. I am sure we will see more of her. The switch from comedy, to very realistic hospital scenes,gave the production a lot more edge and underlined the futility of war.

Based on her true-life letters and memoirs (as the excessive opening declaratives inform us), 'Florence Nightingale' is a different kind of period-drama chronicling the feminist icon's early days and aspirations to become a nurse, and continuing to her subsequent breakdown following the aid she gave in the Crimean War.A major fault of this drama is the patchy, inconsistent writing; colloquialisms and informal conversation leave it seeming out of touch with the era, and grating fantasy sequences seem to have been freshly picked out of a badly performed pantomime. The director's unwise decision to inter-cut between time eras so frequently also only results in unnecessary confusion, and breaking the fourth wall in Nightingale's letters delivery fractures the illusion that what we are watching took place long before the present.Laura Fraser is bold and refreshing in the eponymous role, but she lacks the strength to fully-fledge her character – she could quite simply be any well-spoken women from the period, and I imagined someone such as Helena Bonham Carter or Olivia Williams would have been more suited to the role, fitting comfortably into the character of Florence Nightingale with more power and resonance. On a positive note, considering this is pre-watershed television, the director does manage to convey the horrific nature of battle rather well, and it is an interesting, often atmospheric take on a well-known figurehead. The Victorian aesthetics are also very well established, and there are some fine supporting performances among the rest of the cast.It's not a bad effort, but at a mere sixty minutes the drama felt far longer than necessary thanks to turgid pacing and a lack of fluency, cohesion and dramatic tension. There's nothing innovative or inspiring here, and with far better, more authentic period-drama available it seems an unexciting, bland waste of an hour.