This was another great TV made film drama (for ITV), if you liked Goodnight Mister Tom or Heartless, then you'll like this story based on the H.G. Wells classic novel. Set in Victorian England, it starts with the defining middle part, where the leading man, Alfred Polly (a well cast Lee Evans) plans suicide, and then we see the past that led him there. He started out as an innocent boy with ambitions, then as he got older he fancied a girl on a brick wall, but he gives this up to marry a girl he is not really in love with, Miriam Larkins (Anne-Marie Duff). When he knows the marriage is failing, and he is seen as a bit of a joke, he decides to set fire to his new shop and cut his neck, but the twist is that he fails to go with the slash and escapes the fire. Also, saving his neighbour shop owner's wife, he is seen as a hero. After this, he decides to run away from his marriage to find real happiness. Far from home, he stumbles upon an idyllic waterside inn, run by delightful landlady Nancy (Julie Graham) and is given work. His new life seems perfect, until local thug Jim (Richard Coyle) shows up and tells him to shove off, but will he stand up to him? There is a happy ending though, where are ridding of Jim, and saying a goodbye to widow Miriam (when she thought he was dead), he finds a good life. Also starring Roger Lloyd Pack as Johnson and Trevor Cooper as Rumbold. Very good!
Review of The History of Mr Polly
