The Shadow in the North (2007) (TV)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

John Alexander

Writers:

Adrian Hodges (screenplay)
Philip Pullman (novel)

Release Date:

15 September 2007 (Hungary)

Genre:

Adventure | Mystery | Thriller

Plot Keywords:

Based On Novel

Cast

Jared Harris	...	Axel Bellmann
Doña Croll	...	Nellie Budd
David Harewood	...	Nicholas Bedwell
Hayley Atwell	...	Rosa Garland
JJ Feild	...	Fred Garland
Matt Smith	...	Jim Taylor
Billie Piper	...	Sally Lockhart
John Standing	...	Webster Garland
Antonia Pemberton	...	Miss Walsh
Owen Roe	...	Bram Stoker
Julian Rhind-Tutt	...	Alistair MacKinnon
Richard Clews	...	Mr. Windlesham
Phil Cornwell	...	Harris
Peter Whittington	...	Society Gentleman
Jack Brady	...	Sackville

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Certification:

UK:12 (DVD)

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Trivia:

The striped dress Billie Piper (Sally Lockhart) wears is the same costume previously worn in "North & South" (2004) by Daniela Denby-Ashe (Margaret Hale) and in "Bleak House" (2005) by Gillian Anderson (Lady Dedlock).

Movie Connections:

Follows The Ruby in the Smoke (2006) (TV)

Preposterous Victorian Mystery

It is sad when an excellent cast is wasted in something quite as preposterous as this.

Imagine a late Victorian London where a near teenage young lady styles herself as a 'Financial Consultant' and sinks a retired school teacher's entire retirement savings in a shipping line that goes bankrupt after its ship -- apparently the only one -- mysteriously disappears at sea on a calm day.

The plucky consultant resolves to retrieve the retirement funds and begins investigating in a culturally thoroughly modern, multi-cultural London, as if maybe the screen writer and casting director had failed to notice the Victorian settings and worked a modern script while everybody else did their best to recreate Victorian London without paying attention to the incongruities and anachronisms of the script.

Throw in mediums, psychic visions, mysterious foreigners, dastardly businessmen, surprisingly unintimidating goons, secret weddings and love affairs that are so complicated that even the cast seems quite unable to work out who is involved with whom until the very end.

Fans of Philip Pullman's 'Sally Lockhart' books won't mind any of it but this movie will leave the uninitiated puzzled as to their success.