The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012)

This is a BBC made for TV mini series. It is a heart felt ghost story. Cam (Elliot Kerley) and his mom Eve (Suranne Jones) have a special relationship in that they share dreams and sometimes thoughts. Eleven months after Cam goes missing the family goes on a retreat to remote Crickley Hall, an old large home that was used as an orphanage for London orphans during WWII.The house if filled with the ghosts of children and the graveyard shows us many died in 1943. The film smartly moves between a plot and subplot that takes place in 1943. It is a slow burner, but keeps you engaged. It is not a scary ghost story. No real horror

I was enticed from the moment I saw the eerie opening credits. I can't fault this series, every minute I was gripped with a new twist, amazing performances and a remarkable story line. Although some twists were cliché; you can easily forgive and forget, thanks to something new and exciting happening within the next minute. I read in a bio that the series was classed as a "drama", and a drama indeed it was. If you were expecting a gory horror I'd turn away now. As this series should be engaged with the expectations of a great story line drama... Even if the series still managed to spook me in parts and have me on the edge of my seat nearly all the way through.The story line was truly captivating. The juxtaposition was easy to follow and fun to see a new time period. The only reason for me not rating the series a '10' is simply because I wanted to know a little more about the boy, for which the bio of the series stated was one of the main focus points.A must watch for everyone!

Someone once said of Frank Sinatra that he would do anything for money. I can only assume that this description applies to the group of mainly excellent actors who performed in this grubby little story.The rather tenuous connection between the loss of her own child apparently set off the sequence of events that took us back to the grisly happening in Crickley Hall many years ago. Flashbacks were on the whole handled clumsily, the supposed frightening occurrences were mostly ridiculous, rather than frightening (as I assume they were supposed to be) and it became increasingly difficult to understand who was who (in both the past and present). Although I now wish that I had followed my initial instinct and given up on it after the first episode, I stayed to the messy end and not for one moment did I feel scared/frightened (as I suppose the writers intended) - but disgusted that anyone should write such tripe (presumably for entertainment's sake). When it was over I was left with the thought that at least it kept people in work - but I would have very much liked to see their talents deployed elsewhere.

This is an appalling BBC mini-series, commissioned by the usual oafs and morons there who are overpaid and 'outtacontrol'. The series concerns the savage physical abuse of children by sadists. Really, is there no limit to the perversities shown on the BBC these days? This series should absolutely not have been made. It is offensive and revolting. I will however compliment the performance of the young actress Olivia Cooke, who plays the character Nancy, and hope that she never has to appear in anything as terrible as this series ever again. Some of the casting is however so uninspired that some of the bad talent to be seen in this series was appropriately dumped into this rubbish bin.