Jonathan Dore 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?

revenga I too had seen the many trailers the BBC had put out for this drama and being a fan of Robert Lindsay and Damien Lewis (and Jodhi May in Last of the Mohicans) i was expecting something quite special from auntie.What i got was a story that lacked substance (and much of a plot) and was told using huge jumps into the future followed by or preceded by lines like "i haven't spoken to Paul in 6 years..." and a deep and meaningful look.There was no real character development and i was confused as to how Poliakoff, Jodhi May and Damian Lewis had managed to make the leads so successfully unlikeable.As I mentioned above I like both of them in other projects but in this I thought they were unforgivable. Even the normally sublime Robert Lindsay shuffled about looking out of place - which just emphasises how badly written his part was.I really wanted to like this and had been quite excited - planning an evening in with a friend to enjoy the rarity of drama in a world of Big Brother and Strictly Dance on Ice (or whatever). The sad thing is that Big Brother might have been better entertainment...Verdict: Easily missable - I should have gone to the pub instead.

are_you_in As another viewer commented, this feature length production is pretty empty- both of story and characters. The two leads are both very irritating and have no real depth to them. How she ever becomes attached to him is never really shown. The only scenes they share are ones in which she is reprimanding him for some minor incident. In fact the only thing they ever do together at work is a colour coded file system, constantly viewed as some work of genius. She even later calls him her mentor- though we never see him teach her anything. Paul isn't half as enigmatic as he is made out to be either.All Friends and Crocodiles is, is a succession of shots of grand parties against the backdrop of the 1980s/1990s (with the obligatory brick mobile phone joke). There's a vague sense of whimsy about the story but it all feels rather forced. We never cared about these characters in the first place- so when their various falls from grace and rises to fortune happen, as an audience we just don't care.I'm sure the writer/directors other work is all very worth watching (like the 'The Lost Prince' for instance), and whilst 'Friends and Crocodiles' all looks similarly lavish and picturesque there is really nothing at all to it.My Dad summed it up perfectly as the credits rolled- 'Pathetic'

Rich (freeboprich-1) This is most definitely one of the most affecting dramas I have seen in the past year, both casting and the expertise of the setting and prop crew were flawless. Honestly, I might be credulous, but the intended chronology of the film was exceptionally convincing, it did to an extent make me wish that more detail had been shown about the in-between periods that the narration had passed by, the characters were so intense that I felt pulled in by their stories and anything could have been relevant. It goes without saying that as a fan of Jodhi May as well as of the creator, I had been looking forward to this for some time and there was no disappointment apart from what I already mentioned. On the whole there's more in the way of emotional turbulence than joyful interludes, but the overall message is delightful and has effected me profoundly. My thanks to all involved.