and already we have a potential contender for TV drama of the year. Here was a two-hour one-off piece of work that created for so many people a world that they all knew all too well, yet imbibed it with a freshness and a vitality that made it utterly irresistible. When watching this piece, it is impossible not to think of the Great Gatsby and Bonfire of the Vanities. Like this, they were tales of luxury and excess, whilst around them (if they bothered to look hard enough) stood poverty and despair. Paul is an irresponsible self-made young millionaire a and a man of incredible potential. Lizzie is a dour young career woman of stoic determination and an incredible aptitude for organisation. It is clear from this that when the former hirers the latter as a secretary in order to fulfil all his grand ideas, that the relationship between the two is never going to be totally cosy. And so it proves over their respective ups and downs through 25 years of British urban life. Whether or not it is mainly about those two or the world around them depends on your point of view. It could simply be a basic drama about a very mismatched couple, but then that would not be very original. Instead, they become a conduit for Poliakoff to place his views about us since Thatcher. About our virtues, our vices, and - in all walks of life - our excesses. Utterly essential.
Review of Friends & Crocodiles
