La revue de presse

Round table arts and culture discussion programme. Martha Kearney is joined by guests, including Suede's Brett Anderson, to discuss the latest installment of Harry Potter, Wayne McGregor's new dance experience and Channel 4's star-studded new adaptation of William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart.

ANY HUMAN HEART: Sunday 21st November, Channel 4, 9pm ALERT ME

The first episode of this touching four-part adaptation of William Boyd’s novel sees an aged Logan Mountstuart (Jim Broadbent) looking back on the miasma that is his life. Like the book, this skillfully altered Channel 4 dramatisation is an exploration of identity and loss with one central theme: the passage of time and its effect on a man. Retrospectively, Logan sees his past selves as individual people, a feeling conveyed by the three different actors who portray him: Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin (his youngest avatar), all of whom are excellent.

The recollections begin during his time as an awkward aspiring novelist at Oxford in the mid 1920s, where he spends much of his time attempting to lose his virginity. Mountstuart eventually writes a racy novel that, though devoid of literary merit, sells well. A marriage into the aristocracy follows after heartbreak from the politically charged, idealistic – and in her own way equally crude – Land Fothergill (yes that’s actually her name), with whom Logan remains obsessed throughout the episode.

Unsurprisingly, married life does not suit Logan, who keeps a mistress, the beautiful and coquettish Freya, and follows some of the luminaries of the early 20th century intelligentsia such as George Orwell and Arthur Koestler by reporting on the Spanish Civil War. However, unlike these authors our man shows little ideological motivation for covering the event, simply a prosaic desire for the fantastic money it offers.

What we get is a portrait of a flawed, Zelig-like character with a penchant for being present at some of the most tumultuous points in the eras history, rubbing shoulders with some of its most memorable figures from Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming to the upper echelons of royalty. Mountstuart doesn’t seem to see that he is himself a crude, banal and unsophisticated bon viveur in the mould of the English upper classes he lives off but purports to despise.

Like Montstuart, many of the characters are shallow but interesting, particularly as portraits of certain types of archaic personalities, some straight out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Thankfully, Montstuart himself is not portrayed as any sort of embodiment of 20th century aimlessness or other such drivel. Boyd (who wrote the screenplay) and the rest of the production team shrewdly and vividly bring to life a character attempting to simultaneously live through and solve the riddle of the human condition. In order to keep the show’s momentum over the next three instalments, it must be careful not to descend into parading landmarks of 20th-century history. However, if this is a taste of what is to come, viewers are in for a treat.

TV review: Any Human Heart (C4) had its work cut out to bring anything fresh to the feckless posh boy table, but managed to deliver an engaging period romp.

Andrew Pettie reviews the first episode of William Boyd's Any Human Heart, starring Jim Broadbent, Matthew Macfadyen and Gillian Anderson.

Any Human Heart was a touching tale of the 20th century – with a very loud orchestra

Damien Love finds William Boyd’s adaptation of his novel luxurious but long-winded.

William Boyd's epic Any Human Heart was underwhelming on the small screen. Elsewhere, Peter Mandelson loved the camera and the camera was kinder to JFK. By Phil Hogan

Who could root for such a charmless philanderer, even if one of his three faces is Jim Broadbent?

But if you have – theoretically putting you among the 20 percent of Americans who read one last year or the 67 percent of British children who own one –

William Boyd's 2002 novel is perfect material for a mini-series, especially a classic British period drama. The book was written as a series of journals kept by the fictitious Logan Mountstuart, who lived from 1906 to 1991. Being the inner workings of a man's mind, it's a deeply personal story. But it's also a story of both the various ages of man, and of the world, throughout a particularly tumultuous century. In this four-part series we first meet Logan in his final year at Oxford, in 1926, when he's obsessed by two things: sex (specifically, losing his virginity); and writing a great novel. By episode's end he's more or less achieved both, managing to have sex with a number of young women, travelling to Paris (where he meets Ernest Hemingway), and writing a racy bestseller, if not exactly a great novel. Ten years on and many things about Boyd's book still live in my memory, not least its remarkable ability to maintain a coherent voice even as that voice matures from callow youth to worldly man and into old age. That's managed here partly by a lovely screenplay written by Boyd, and partly through terrific casting. The three Logans are played by Sam Claflin (Pillars of the Earth, Pirates of the Caribbean), Matthew Macfadyen (Spooks) and the wonderful Jim Broadbent. While Claflin dominates this first ep, we do get to see glimpses of Broadbent, whose rummaging through old papers kickstarts the story, and Macfadyen, in flashback. All three are great in their own right, but also feel right as Logan matures. From a production point of view this is also spot-on, the kind of elegant period piece the Brits do so well, and it rightly won last year's BAFTA for best serial drama.