Room at the Top

I'm watching Room at the Top with the fabulous Maxine Peake. Better I thought than Simone Signoret in the 1959 classic, though she won an Oscar for it. I think I found the classic Penguin edition on my dad's bookshelf around 1970. He did read some good books! Funny how a young girl like Susan can be totally 'in love' (whatever that means.....') and not notice that her lover is not in love with her. I guess we have all been there. We think we can make them fit the story. Poor Susan doesn't even understand a good story when he tells it to her, which is rather a good ploy to discourage our empathy for her. And Joe isn't quite the angry young man of the Braine novel, in fact he's a bit soft, but Matthew Mcnulty matches Laurence Harvey in a sort of new mannish way. It's Maxine that makes it though; watch it for her tough, tender, bittersweet rendition of a more mature but poignant and hapless love.