Jim Carter

Thematically adventurous...the bloody shocks that paint the town Red emerge from suburban squalor: dirty streets, dirty crimes, and dirty politicians.

The Nicholas Searle novel Hatcher adapts features a shopworn story with easily anticipated plot twists, resulting in a soggy and largely pointless exercise that gets by on its consummate cast and some witty dialogue.

Forgive me for suggesting that Conservative peer Fellowes—or, as he’s sometimes known, Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL—might consider Downton the cake he’s letting us eat.