Shooting the Past

This gem from writer-director Stephen Poliakoff aired on the BBC to popular and critical acclaim, and was a surprise hit of a drama-lite year. Using the setting of a photograph library, and the plot that the collection needs to broken up and sold off to satisfy the greed of an American property developer, it says a lot about the associative process of memory, the sequencial nature of small details, and about ourselves as viewers of the drama within a drama.

Of the excellent cast, four stand out - Lindsay Duncan, Timothy Spall, Billie Whitelaw, and Liam Cunningham. The images really provide the crux of the series though, as we see a path through time and follow one character through from one reality to the next. The fabulous music also helps the process, and all things combined make this a really superior piece of small-screen drama.