Friends & Crocodiles (2005) (TV)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Stephen Poliakoff

Writer:

Stephen Poliakoff (writer)

Release Date:

25 February 2006 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

"Friends and Crocodiles" traces the changing relationship of maverick entrepreneur Paul Reynolds and his assistant Lizzie Thomas over a period of 20 years from the beginnings of the Thatcher era to the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

Plot Keywords:

Crocodile | Secretary | Entrepreneur | Mentor | Businesswoman

Cast

Damian Lewis	...	Paul Reynolds
Jodhi May	...	Lizzie Thomas
Robert Lindsay	...	William Sneath
Patrick Malahide	...	Anders
Eddie Marsan	...	Butterworth
Allan Corduner	...	Marcus
Chris Larkin	...	Redfern
John Warnaby	...	Coyle
Paul Hickey	...	Albert Brother
Tim Plester	...	Albert Junior
Isabel Brook	...	Angela
Sophie Hunter	...	Christine
Sasha Hardway	...	Young Rachel
Shannon Murray	...	Older Rachel
Harry Melling	...	Young Oliver

Also Known As:

Untitled Stephen Poliakoff Project (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

UK:15 | Australia:M | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:13

Filming Locations:

Broughton Castle, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, UK

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Trivia:

The title refers to a baby crocodile that main character Paul owns. Paul says he thinks something can be learned from crocodiles because they survived the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Quotes:

William Sneath: Paul collects people that interest him - and then lets them do whatever they want. And now he's collected you.
Lizzie Thomas: No. I'm just the secretary. That is quite different.

Movie Connections:

Followed by Gideon's Daughter (2005) (TV)

A summary of British society from Thatcher till the present through the eyes of two volatile business people

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.