THE LOST BOYS (BBC-TV TRILOGY) REVIEWS:

"I doubt if biography has ever been better dramatized than in this sensitive and beautifully crafted masterpiece, and I am quite sure such excellence is beyond any other television service in the world. ... The entire House of Commons should be required to view it before voting on the proposed increase in BBC funding."
Sean Day-Lewis, Daily Telegraph

"Andrew Birkin's superb and haunting trilogy ... something quite out of the ordinary ... Desire, devotion, disease and death loom out in disturbingly intimate close up. ... Ian Holm, physically Barrie to the life, rules absolutely."
Michael Church, The Times

"A brilliant achievement ... a classic in the television medium ... one of the finest pieces of television drama I have ever seen. ... I had the experience of watching, not Ian Holm playing J M Barrie, but Barrie himself ... the definitive recreation of J M Barrie in dramatic terms."
Janet Dunbar (Barrie's 1971 biographer), The Listener

"Andrew Birkin's convincing and compelling biographical trilogy is most beautifully and sensitively done. ... There is a nice ambivalence about The Lost Boys as there is about The Turn of the Screw, an ambiguity and sense of menace. A delightful frightfulness. The rich sets, the allusive, elusive script which always suggests more than it says. ... The Lost Boys is a gift, a present, a parabola of pleasure to me, something to be unwrapped and tasted and rewrapped and saved until later."
Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian

"Pure gold, a deeply moving event. I do not think any actor will ever get closer to his part than Ian Holm did as J M Barrie, and Andrew Birkin can be as pleased with himself as we are with him."
Stanley Eveling, The Scotsman

"A triumph of sensitivity, deeply satisfying, moving and disturbing. ... A riveting performance by Ian Holm as Barrie, full of small detail and utterly convincing. ... Consistently beautiful ... my wife dissolves in every scene."
Richard Last, Daily Telegraph

"A work of art, against which all future television biographies should be measured ... so delicately done that one catches one's breath. Ian Holm, physically Barrie to the life, has rarely appeared to better effect."
Hazel Holt, Stage & Television

"Triumph of The Lost Boys. ... It is only very rarely that a television drama comes along in which every constituent manages to provide a flawless contribution. The Lost Boys has been such a production."
Chris Dunley, Financial Times

"... this splendid, model dramatized biography, graced by Ian Holm's brilliant performance as J M Barrie."
Time Out

"The form of the child-adult encounter, so very often idealized by writers, is almost too painfully authentic here, too horribly real - yet depicted so beautifully. The Lost Boys has that rare virtue of blending truth with exquisite taste and perception."
Dr Morris Fraser, BBC Kaleidoscope

"The orchestration of event and emotion was almost faultless throughout The Lost Boys. ... Birkin made his plays depend ultimately not on a series of accidents, but on the working of a pattern that was constantly distorted, lost, broken, and found again. ... The closing moments of The Lost Boys embodied the ambiguities that characterized the whole series. ... It is the highest tribute I can think of that I do not want to know what happened next. It would interfere too much with my memories."
M C Crane, The Listener

"Enchanting and disturbing ... a most remarkable television event. An undertow of unease and eroticism lies beneath the glistening surface. ... A lovely, disturbing production, not quite of this world - indeed, no more of this world than the bewitched and lonely writer at its heart. Ian Holm never put a foot wrong in his stunning portrayal of J M Barrie. ... My Pick of the Year: For sheer delicacy, The Lost Boys."
Elizabeth Cowley, Daily Mail

"Best Original Drama of the Year: The Lost Boys, which advanced from competence to brilliance to deep compassion and mastery of touch, and which, for intensity of characterization and economy of writing, was a masterpiece of the televisual form. ... Best Acting performance of the year: Ian Holm as Sir James Barrie in The Lost Boys. I doubt if any finer performance has been seen this year on the screen."
Benny Green, Punch

"The Lost Boys was, I believe, an absolute landmark in television drama."
Sir Ian Trethowan, Director General of the BBC, interviewed in The Guardian

 

THE LOST BOYS (BBC PUBLICATIONS):

"The published scripts of The Lost Boys are a priceless addition to a corpus of literature of coherent television drama."
Spectator

"The full script of Andrew Birkin's masterpiece The Lost Boys, one of the outstanding television achievements of the decade, has now been published by the BBC and is cheap at half the price."
Punch

"Many television scripts do deserve to be read, and none more so than Andrew Birkin's award-winning trilogy, The Lost Boys. ... For students of the history of English Drama, the book is obviously essential reading."
The Listener

 

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