This was a dark story. Never one minute of happiness. Everyone in the movie was a horrible person except Mary. I wondered how bad was Ned that she would live in scalor and watch ppl be murdered instead of returning to marry her friend Ned. I never saw or understood why she felt anything for Jem although Matt is a handsome actor. Now the real mystery was why nasty Patience ever agreed to take her into this scum bag life or why she was so devoted to her horrible husband. I suppose at the end where they were kissing and talking about an egg he bought her i was supposed to be touched after watching him drown an entire ship full of men. No not feeling it. Did not care one bit for either. Both should hang. They were all scum of the earth.

Watch on Netflix so you do not suffer the mumbling. Do not watch for continuity issues. I was reminded of Crime and Punishment and some sad personal memories. I was very naive at that age and had never experienced true evil. It wasn't until 9/11 in downtown Manhattan that I truly realized that true evil exists. This level of casting and acting are rarely seen on film. I was duly horrified at many points. I was going to recommend it to my daughter but she does not need to see this reality at this point in her life. The brutality is portrayed in its real form, and many of us in America are descended more from the Moors of England, than the pretty pictures of Jane Austin.

If you are a US viewer you'll certainly need the subtitles turned on although I recommend you find something else to watch. I turned off after around 30 minutes because of the mumbling dialogue which has attracted thousands of complaints to the BBC.Sean Harris is utterly terrible in this role as he was in the channel four travesty Southcliffe.How the director/producers failed to notice the nonsensical dialogue is beyond me.Do yourselves a favour and buy the (very excellent) book and give this utterly terrible adaptation a wide berth.

It's a reasonable stab at a great tale, but sadly this latest version of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn takes too many television shortcuts to satisfy and really impress. That's a shame, because there is a lot about it which makes it stand out from what another production might have settled for.Effort and imagination went in to making the story very much of its time and although the various Cornish accents are at times a little off (I live there - here - and can tell, although I'm not myself Cornish), it does take you back to the early years of the 19th century when life was not half as sweet as it is now for most of us. OK it has been castigated for several anachronisms, but if you are not aware of them - and I was not - they won't spoil your viewing. I rather liked the acting, too, and thought it well cast. Where it falls down is in the pretty mediocre script and storytelling: where subtle exposition and greater characterisation were needed, we got, instead, the pretty usual two-dimensional TV version good and evil. This was storytelling by numbers. In fact, the storytelling was pretty slapdash.Too much was left unexplained. What hold did the Vicar of Altarnun have over Joss Merlyn which so ensnared him to his will? And why did the Vicar stick to the pretence of being a man of God. Surely it was more than just needing a 'good cover story'? And what drove him to lead a gang of wreckers in the first place? It cannot have been merely for venal gain, because he seems wholly uninterested in it.It was the kind of inner detail which this version needed but which it lacked to make it something special. As it is it serves well as a piece of TV fodder and in many ways is better than much we are presented with. It's just a shame BBC couldn't - or couldn't be bothered to - go that extra mile.