donnahu Review of The Cater Street Hangman

The Cater Street Hangman (1998 TV Movie)

Great Acting, Awful Adaptation

[6/10 · 3 December 2010]

For Anne Perry fans such as myself, this will be a huge disappointment. Although the acting is up to the usual high standards of British TV, the plot was changed so often and so radically and so unnecessarily, that people who read the book may not even recognize it as the same story. The characters' personalities were exaggerated to the point of caricature, doing things they would never have done in the original story. For example, Charlotte, a seventeen-year-old Victorian girl kept under the close eye of her strict parents, would likely not have been running around the neighborhood alone at night with a serial killer loose. Or Pitt, under instructions to search the entire city of London to find the killer, would probably have had something better to do than following Charlotte around, hanging out under her window, and even following her to church! In the end, all the changes only confused the plot. This was a huge waste of great talent. I was hoping to see more of Anne Perry's work on film, but if this is howit's going to be, I'll skip it.