Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Scotness Ironic that it doesn't do it so well. A very interesting story, themes and characters, but it was dealt with in far too episodic a fashion. You end up feeling you're dipping in and out of something that's happening, rather than experiencing it and travelling with it. Although the cinematography was good, it wasn't anything astounding either - it was nicely thought out but not groundbreaking or anything , so I don't understand why people are raving about that facet of the film here. All in all an enjoyable film, but a little self defeating as well. Apparently that's not a long enough review - so what else is there? The acting was great, the costumes were good - it didn't really feel like the early 80's to me, but then I wasn't in England at the time so what would I know! It could have been a pretty unique film if we travelled the journey more closely with the characters - connecting huge amounts of time in narrative drama is a challenge - but having black outs and characters remeeting and saying "i haven't spoken to you for 4 years" isn't the best way to do it! Of course you have to connect the story line dots, which is kind if fun, but you get too distant from the characters emotional journey.

stew-43 Friends and Crocodiles follows the career of Paul, a brilliant entrepreneur who has made his fortune from retail. As well as being talented, he is also feckless and unstable. We open in 1981, when Paul is the owner of a beautiful country house set in a vast estate (echoes of Richard Branson's purchase of The Manor near Oxford a few years earlier). We then follow Paul's volatile career, which becomes intertwined with that of Lizzie, a talented manager, whom he recruits as his PA from a local estate agent. She brings order to the chaos of the house, which Paul has filled with an assortment of freaks who are all expecting to make it big in something. Lizzie storms out of his employment after a stunt at one of Paul's parties puts people in danger and as the years progress their paths cross at intervals, their relationship slowly mutating into one of grudging mutual respect. Despite the chaos he creates around him, it is his judgement that she ends up respecting, against the entrenched wisdom of the whole business establishment.The film is a sharp, accurate and very involving tour of Britain over the last quarter century, through the high noon of Thatcherism, the wobbling confidence of the Major years, the dot com boom and the subsequent meltdown, through to the present. The lunacies, the technologies, the pain and the silliness. Maybe you had to live through it and suffer with it for Friends and Crocodiles to work. But even without that it's a vision very difficult to ignore.Nowhere on television have I seen colour used as it is here. Almost every shot is a work of art, which of course makes it sound pretentious. It isn't pretentious on screen -- just a succession of startling, highly unusual and often very beautiful images. In some ways reminiscent of Fellini's movies, but more rooted in the everyday.Underpinning it are the expert performances of Damian Lewis as Paul and Jodhi May as Lizzie, which are crisp, sharp and utterly believable.

barciad and already we have a potential contender for TV drama of the year. Here was a two-hour one-off piece of work that created for so many people a world that they all knew all too well, yet imbibed it with a freshness and a vitality that made it utterly irresistible. When watching this piece, it is impossible not to think of the Great Gatsby and Bonfire of the Vanities. Like this, they were tales of luxury and excess, whilst around them (if they bothered to look hard enough) stood poverty and despair. Paul is an irresponsible self-made young millionaire a and a man of incredible potential. Lizzie is a dour young career woman of stoic determination and an incredible aptitude for organisation. It is clear from this that when the former hirers the latter as a secretary in order to fulfil all his grand ideas, that the relationship between the two is never going to be totally cosy. And so it proves over their respective ups and downs through 25 years of British urban life. Whether or not it is mainly about those two or the world around them depends on your point of view. It could simply be a basic drama about a very mismatched couple, but then that would not be very original. Instead, they become a conduit for Poliakoff to place his views about us since Thatcher. About our virtues, our vices, and - in all walks of life - our excesses. Utterly essential.

Steve Borley 'Friends & Crocodiles' is an ambitious, layered delight. A strong cast - in particular Jodhi May and Damian Lewis as leads Liz and Paul -breathe real life into Poliakoff's rangy and challenging drama.The story takes the audience through the relationship of Liz and Paul from an odd 70s beginning to a late 90s acceptance; a relationship that is never allowed to resort to a sexual connection and as such remains an ambiguous and mature exploration of a relationship between two intelligent but differently wired people.As the characters develop, Paul slips further and further from the successful property magnate he is at the start, whilst Liz becomes ever more successful and senior in the glittering 80s and 90s economy. Whilst Paul remains, or certainly seems to, carefree Liz seems stuck in a vortex of misfortune that lead her to taste success before disaster ensues.Poliakoff's eye for social historic detail is an ever-present theme throughout - he introduces mobile phones and PC and then the dot.com bubble. But this is not mere showing off, or 'B' movie-style signposting of time and place. Instead this changing technology takes us towards the finale where Liz's grand job at a large multinational turns to ashes as the headlong race to become a dot.com destroys her firm, it's employees and investors and ultimately (almost) Liz herself.Poliakoff's theme is that of the danger of herd thinking; of assuming new is always better. Liz's fall from grace looks obvious to us in 2006 as we all wonder at the hysteria of the dot.com bubble. But back then it was a heresy to doubt the 'new paradigm'. The target is spot on, and well made - Paul, of course, reads the runes rather well - especially with his strategy paper as a futurologist. But such is the nature of the way their relationship has matured over the years there is no bitter pay-off of clunky 'just deserts' denouement. Poliakoff's characters are too well-rounded for that to have been possible.'Friends & Crocodiles' is a well-paced, thematically-rich drama that is funny, challenging and wise. The main characters begin and remain charming, sympathetic and worthy of the audience's empathy. That is a testament to the script, direction and performances. As with 'The Lost Prince', Poliakoff's last effort, he reminds the audience that quality and entertainment are not mutually exclusive - and that the multi-channel environment of the 21st century does not mean the demise of truly superb television.