To Be the Best (1992)

After watching A Woman of Substance and Hold the Dream, this final installment was a bitter let down. I don't know why Jenny Seagrove was not in this, but the usually excellent Lindsay Wagner was on auto-pilot as Paula O'Neill and Anthony Hopkins was wasted in a pointless role. Can you tell I didn't like it yet?!?A wafer-thin plot, totally ignoring the best parts of BTB's book and a decidedly dicky script did not redeem this - well, I don't know what to call it really.The whole thing also looks very dated, even though it was only filmed in 1992 - it looks more like '82 to me!I would advise people who have read the books to stick to the books and the first two mini-series and avoid this one like the plague!

This, to me, is a very good TV movie showing the problems a career woman must face with family love, rivalry with members of a family-owned business. It may be very different from the book by Barbara Taylor Bradford but the producer and director have the right and option to change the contents and story so long as the TV movie is entertaining to the TV audience. It could be foolish and idiotic to keep comparing this program with the original book.

Having sat down to watch what I expected to be a pretty dire video while eating a take out curry, I was quite amazed at the sheer banality of the plot and script, and the unremitting woodenness of the acting.However, and I know this sounds like a set-up, one person made me stop chewing long enough to check the cast listing. As it happened the role was not listed as far as I could see, and I had to come onto imdb to identify the actress.While far from redeeming the whole shocker, Catherine Roman plays her heart out [in the nicest sense] in the role of "waitress" - yes, you heard right, waitress! According to imdb this is her one and only professional role, which is a shame.Watch it before you scoff and see if you agree.Cheers all - make mine an extra double decaff.

True, Barbara Taylor Bradford is not a great writer. In fact, the Harte trilogy is the only body of her work I've liked at all. And this, the conclusion, is certainly not one of the better books in the series.That said, however, the book is far better than this piece of junk adaptation. Lindsay Wagner is about as miscast as anyone could possibly get (and that's even without counting an American playing a British character), the plot bears no resemblance to anything it was based on, and Anthony Hopkins gets second billing (and lots of screen time) playing a character who was only in the book for about five lines. What a letdown.