That would be me, but I'm not forking out...from Yorkshire and living in Scotland-ha!
Still hoping for a DVD.

Watched the first episode last night.  What a whirlwind!
For those familiar with the books they flipped the first two and used Bad News as the first episode and the second will be based on Never Mind.  I think this was a very wise choice.  Bad News really throws you into the action and gives Benedict so much to work with.  BC himself won't be a big part of the second episode that will take place mostly in flashback.

Do I really have to say how amazing Ben was?  He holds nothing back from the pain and ugliness in Patrick's head and his self-destructive behavior.  After reading the books I would've wanted to watch any adaptation regardless of who stared.  However Benedict was made for this role.

Only had a couple of glimpses of Hugo Weaving as Patrick's father but it was enough to make me excited about his performance in episode 2.

I am also glad that this is on Showtime so that they aren't going to have to sanitize any of the darkness in Patrick's story.  

Part of me wishes we had gotten all the episodes at once so that I could just binge the series.  However, even if I could binge it wouldn't be a good idea.  For this story I think I"m going to really need the week in between episodes for recovery and contemplation.  

Another high praise from the media:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/may/13/patrick-melrose-review-brilliant-portrayal-addiction-benedict-cumberbatch?CMP=share_btn_fb

 

I have a feeling the second episode is going to hurt even worse than the first.
Even though I expect the story telling to be a bit more subtle.

besleybean wrote:

I am really angry with my best Sherlock pal right now...
She hated it, completely slagged it off and  her attitude was appalling.

Was she specific about what she didn't like? 

Nice quote.

besleybean wrote:

I am really angry with my best Sherlock pal right now...
She hated it, completely slagged it off and  her attitude was appalling.

Well, the series deals with a hard subject. I can imagine some people could be put off by that. Reviews of the books were similarily polarised.

besleybean wrote:

Yeah well she's supposed to be a Christian and quite frankly I found her attitude heartless.

Christians are fallible people too.... like anybody else.
 

have a question about the scene in the hotel room when Patrick tries to kill himself. He cannot open the window, not even when he smashes the urn against the pane. When he wakes up in the morning, the window is wide open. Is this to be understood symbolically (him choosing life although he could end it)? Because we never see him manage to open the window.

besleybean wrote:

Saying he was a horrible man and why would she want to spend any time with him...talk about completely missing the point.
I was hard pressed not to tell her to never work for social services, with attitude like that.
Somebody put up a beautiful meme about it on facebook, whch said it better than I did...but I can't copy and paste it for her.
If she gets back to me(Ithink she knows I'm annoyed!), I can quote it to her...
"He behaves abominably, becuse he is evolving from being a victim to being a survivor."
 

I haven't seen the episode yet, so I will not be in this thread too much until I have, but what I will say is that it can be a difficult balance to make a character who is hard to like still a character that a viewer (or reader) will be interested in. I know there are times when I've watched a film and the characters were so despicable (cough cough Goodfellas) that I couldn't connect and did not like the film at all. But there are other times when a character is irritating and is not very nice to people but is still a character who is interesting to watch, sometimes even a character you want to succeed. And maybe different people have different thresholds for how much to tolerate before they can't stand it. I know there are people who checked out of other TV shows once the characters got to a certain point of badness.