Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                          An Inspector Calls by J.B.Priestley. BBC1 Drama. 2015. "There are millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths, still left with us, with their lives and hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness all intertwined with our lives and what we think, and say, and do." I feel as if I've grown up with Priestley's play and it's not just my northern roots. When I went into teaching in the 1970s it was on the syllabus and it was a good choice to cover in our limited time for O level and GCSE. It is, after all, a short play, easy to read and study so not a particularly great challenge for most students.  It's now 2015 and Priestley's play is still on the literature syllabus and I still come across it in my capacity as an examiner. This adaptation was by playwright Helen Edmunson who develops the character of Eva Smi...

                             The Ex-Wives by Deborah Moggach. "He was an outcast, shivering in the cold whilst all over Britain loving families sat beside the fire opening presents and playfully trouncing each other at board games." It's the 1990s and you will be plunged imminently into the painful and complicated woes of an ageing actor known affectionately as Buffy. Russell Buffery. Apart from the occasion when he wallows in self-pity, he is amiable but absolutely hopeless. He is 61 years of age, a has-been who views himself as a "discontinued model consigned to the scrapheap." If you are feeling uncomfortable with that what about this one: like "an old pit pony put out to grass?" Penny informs us that he has a “bottomless capacity for self-deception” believing everything he wants to believe. “ They have to tell lies and believe them.” Things seem to be looking up for Buffy when he meets Celeste, ...