Nigel Bryant

Whatever you do, don't miss Nightsleeper (available on BBCiPlayer). It's the best thing ever. A brilliant, brilliant parody of terrible British TV drama. Excruciating acting by actors hilariously miscast, cliche-ridden direction where you've seen every shot a thousand times before, and a preposterous plot and dialogue by a scriptwriter who evidently lives in a cave and has no idea how anyone in the real world talks or thinks or behaves in any given situation. It's a tour de force and will have you weeping with laughter.

Well, give it its due: it undeniably LOOKS good - lots of lush interiors and pretty-pretty exteriors, and if you’re into spectacular wigs it's the film for you. But dramatically it's a total shambles: it rambles and reels aimlessly for two hours. After half an hour I was asking “Where is this going?” and asked the same desperate question at increasingly frequent intervals throughout. It reveals nothing about the period (of which it has a paper-thin understanding) and has nothing to say about… well… anything. As for the acting in this pointless film, most of it is woefully unconvincing, with lines rattled out in a way that stinks of being based on no real thought. The inexplicably award-winning Olivia Colman hasn't the first idea who she's playing and simply indulges in basinsful of random emoting: it’s all empty technique. In her worst moments she delivers lines as if she's a housewife sending someone on an errand to Tesco. Imagine my surprise when I realised it was billed as a "dark comedy": in a pretty full cinema a couple of people just about chuckled twice, and when they did I thought they were being puerile. It’s a turkey of epic proportions.

The visuals (some of them) are great, and the opening 10 or 15 minutes are promisingly atmospheric. But then... then... oh dear... Lowery spends more than two hours telling a story that doesn't need anything like that long.... and doesn't tell it at all. As a piece of storytelling it's a disaster, with several grindingly slow sequences that could have been cut without the slightest loss. It's all very artily photographed - good and skilful stuff - but to what end? He clearly doesn't understand the essence of the story, replaces it with vague and ramshackle "deepity", and ends up telling nothing. There's less (far less) to this than meets the eye. The editing is shocking - much of it so fussy and over-busy that it fails totally to create rhythm and pace. As for the script (the parts that are audible - there's some terrible delivery and sound recording), the kindest thing to say is that the challenge of creating Arthurian dialogue was not met. Sadly (and inexcusably, given the magnificent material), the film is a crashing and self-indulgent bore.