I saw this "picture" (you look like a picture) and experienced it as horror or must I say "ghast"? I wrote to the BBC that there seems nothing more fascinating then to witness insanity. I never got an answer. The problem is: Why must this kind of amusement be made public? Is it disdain? Regards.

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?

I'd heard a lot of hype about Stephen Poliakoff and the trailer looked great, so I was anticipating something special. The first twenty minutes or so provide a brilliant set-up, and huge credit must go to the set-designers and costume people for incredible visuals.However, the film commits the cardinal sin of not bothering to give you any reason to like the characters. The two leads are stiff and monotonous (how can a man who has a threesome with two nubile blonds and hires thugs to gatecrash his own party be so ditch-water dull as Paul?) whilst the minor characters are given only the briefest of set-up scenes for us to get to know them before being referred to nostalgically for the rest of the film. What are we meant to think - oh yes, the boy we saw for two seconds holding a sparkler, how poignant to think he is now 40 and sitting in a café! Who cares!? Furthermore, there has been a definite decision to avoid the obvious path (I don't want to put a spoiler, but when you see it you'll know what I mean). This path would indeed have been obvious, yes, but it would have given some substance to the film, which is otherwise totally bland.A lack of consistency also pervades the characterisation, and rather than making the characters elusive and mysterious, it just makes them unbelievable. Would a man who has built a huge fortune from nothing be genuinely content to lose it all and live in squalor? Would a brilliant businessman really accept a huge salary to work as a consultant and then, 5 months later, simply utter a one-word plan and be confused as to why anyone thought this was insufficient? If so, why? If we aren't given an insight into his thinking process, all we can assume is that there is no real plan behind his character: he is just a mishmash of whatever dialogue the writer thinks is clever at the time...And if I haven't put you off yet, the final conversation between the two lead characters is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard in a "serious" movie.Friends and Crocodiles scrapes 3 points for the brilliant first 20 minutes and for the sets and costumes throughout, but unless you want a lesson in how not to do it, I really wouldn't bother.

'Friends & Crocodiles' is an ambitious, layered delight. A strong cast - in particular Jodhi May and Damian Lewis as leads Liz and Paul -breathe real life into Poliakoff's rangy and challenging drama.The story takes the audience through the relationship of Liz and Paul from an odd 70s beginning to a late 90s acceptance; a relationship that is never allowed to resort to a sexual connection and as such remains an ambiguous and mature exploration of a relationship between two intelligent but differently wired people.As the characters develop, Paul slips further and further from the successful property magnate he is at the start, whilst Liz becomes ever more successful and senior in the glittering 80s and 90s economy. Whilst Paul remains, or certainly seems to, carefree Liz seems stuck in a vortex of misfortune that lead her to taste success before disaster ensues.Poliakoff's eye for social historic detail is an ever-present theme throughout - he introduces mobile phones and PC and then the dot.com bubble. But this is not mere showing off, or 'B' movie-style signposting of time and place. Instead this changing technology takes us towards the finale where Liz's grand job at a large multinational turns to ashes as the headlong race to become a dot.com destroys her firm, it's employees and investors and ultimately (almost) Liz herself.Poliakoff's theme is that of the danger of herd thinking; of assuming new is always better. Liz's fall from grace looks obvious to us in 2006 as we all wonder at the hysteria of the dot.com bubble. But back then it was a heresy to doubt the 'new paradigm'. The target is spot on, and well made - Paul, of course, reads the runes rather well - especially with his strategy paper as a futurologist. But such is the nature of the way their relationship has matured over the years there is no bitter pay-off of clunky 'just deserts' denouement. Poliakoff's characters are too well-rounded for that to have been possible.'Friends & Crocodiles' is a well-paced, thematically-rich drama that is funny, challenging and wise. The main characters begin and remain charming, sympathetic and worthy of the audience's empathy. That is a testament to the script, direction and performances. As with 'The Lost Prince', Poliakoff's last effort, he reminds the audience that quality and entertainment are not mutually exclusive - and that the multi-channel environment of the 21st century does not mean the demise of truly superb television.