mckymllr I enjoyed this production very much. I don't think the frame distracted from The Master's tale at all but then I wasn't wanting a pure recreation of the original. As it was, we are left with ambiguity. I don't believe in ghosts or evil but like to suspend disbelief just to understand how it would feel. The performances were great, a credit to themselves and the director.

Leofwine_draca The BBC have a long tradition of adapting literary ghost stories at Christmas time and THE TURN OF THE SCREW is their effort for 2009, yet another adaptation of the Henry James chiller condensed into a TV film running time. I wonder why they bothered? This is flimsy, light weight stuff, neither scary nor sufficiently interesting to capture the attention, and probably the worst ghost story they've ever made (at least until the much-tinkered O WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU featuring John Hurt came out).Perhaps fearing that the story has been done to death in the past, the scriptwriter updates the events to WWI, but for no reason – it alters the story in no way. Sadly, for a ghost story, there's no spookiness either, unless some lame flash cutting to supposedly frightening faces and figures is your idea of the utmost in terror. The mostly theatrical cast seem ill at east in front of the cameras, with the lead, Michelle Dockery, particularly unappealing as the fragile governess caught up in the sinister events. This feels low budget and lacking in the extreme, as if they got half a dozen cast members into an old house and filmed it quickly without much effort. To be frank, it's a real chore to sit through. Stick with THE INNOCENTS!

srioux-42-436239 This filmed version of James' novella is a travesty. It begins with the conceit of the insane asylum, in which the Governess is an inmate, as if this were an acceptable or even clever way to evoke the issue of her questionable sanity. The shots and cuts seem to be meant to reinforce this simplistic kind of ambiguity, certainly with none of the subtlety of James' work, and sometimes even to opposite effects, and often garishly. For example, when the Governess first arrives at Bly, she is greeted by the staff. The camera pans over their faces and cuts to close-ups of especially sour-looking expressions in order to make us wonder whether this is really such a nice place, or perhaps that some of these unhappy people may wish her harm. To get at the latent sexuality of the text, this filmed version relies on a piece of lingerie, flashbacks of Quint atop Jessel in bed, and the Governess' fantasies of her and the uncle in various hackneyed romantic gestures. Mrs. Grose's rosy, innocent, and reliable sympathy with the Governess in the novel has been eradicated here and replaced with her somewhat cold rejection of the Governess' claims to have seen Quint and Jessel.There's more. The music has been expediently installed to cue the intended emotional responses. The dialogue and characterizations, with their overwrought emotion, are both anachronistic and unconvincing, and get worse as the film wears on, ending with the children's swearing at the Governess, a device that's just plain tacky, and Miles' pummeling Flora, slapping her face and calling her the b-word before he dunks her head into the water of the lake. This is how the filmmakers attempt to answer the question, What harm might Quint and Jessel intend for the children? Why, to make the children into likenesses of themselves of course! Hence, at the end, Miles kisses the Governess passionately, while the image of the actor who plays Quint is superimposed over him.It's not clear to me why so much of what's produced for television is so poorly done. If the producers and directors are dumbing their work down for wider audiences, then they ought to give us more credit. If they themselves are such poor interpreters of literature, then they should be given other projects, or discharged. Or haunted by Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, and Henry James himself!

srm-1 Of all the programmes in this year's Christmas TV schedule, 'A Turn of the Screw' was the one that I was looking forward to most of all. Although not explicitly advertised as a "BBC Ghost Story for Christmas" that is exactly what it was: a BBC - ghost story - at Christmas. And with top director Tim Fywell at the helm, how could it possibly go wrong? Well, it did.Others might like to list all of the myriad small problems with this production but, for me, there were two major faults which rendered it almost unwatchable: firstly, the two child protagonists were neither enchanting nor engaging which made it impossible to sympathise, or care, about their situation. Secondly, the way that the governess either thought that she heard things, or thought that she saw things, almost every second of every scene of her time on screen meant that there was absolutely no build-up of tension or foreboding throughout the whole production. Ultimately, and disappointingly, it ended up being just a very boring and completely unsatisfying ninety minutes.Once again the true winter chills were to be found on BBC Four this year, with a re-run of the excellent 'Crooked House' and welcome screenings from the real master ghost storyteller - the other Mr. James.