Claire Coghlin

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Amazingly compelling. I started watching this with low expectations since I have virtually no interest in F1 racing, but my husband recommended it and I thought I would give it a try. It resembles a Victorian novel with the wide range of characters, the constant pressures to succeed imposed on technical staff as well as the drivers, and the occasional interventions of chance, delighting some but catastrophic for others. The photography is truly marvellous; the use of personal interviews on and off the track, the contrast between the single-minded focus at the races and the family backgrounds of some of the characters focused on - all add up to a complex experience which is visually hypnotic and emotionally alluring. I felt bereft when Series 3 came to an end.

Much of this read like a misery memoir crossed with a tract warning against the demon drink. For occasional relief there were passages of self-conscious 'poetic' descriptions of landscape. The improbability of the climactic accident (spoiler averted) happening as it did beggared belief, while the (clearly symbolic) dumbness of Agna, the daughter (forever wrapping her shawl round her head) irritated me almost beyond endurance. As for her little garden (another symbol, obviously), tended -and lugged about - through thick and thin, I wondered whether the author had ever tried to do the same herself. Some odd spelling mistakes completed my general impatience with the whole book - e.g. 'pearl' for 'purl' as a knitting stitch, and 'palette' for 'pallet' as a means of storage. My comment at the end (which seemed to take far too long to arrive) was, 'Pretentious piffle.'