Or as one character put it: 'We're stuck in a bloody snow-globe.' But it's also a mathematical conundrum trapped in a tropical anomaly surrounded by a sea of puzzlement. Like Churchill's verdict on Russia, Lost is 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. Slick, high-concept and wilfully unrealistic, it's everything British drama is not and manifestly does not want to be. In contrast, a proverbial team of monkeys would be more likely than any British dramatists to come up with a series such as Lost.

Well paced, beautifully designed and astutely scripted, Jane Eyre again confirms, like last year's Bleak House, that the bright future of British drama remains dressed in the costume of the dim past. Perhaps as a result of such disappointments, Stephens appears to have stopped awaiting his moment and started enjoying his time. Several false alarms include a poorly received TV adaptation of the steadfastly unadaptable The Great Gatsby. Ever since he first came to notice 14 years ago in The Camomile Lawn, Stephens has been one of those actors said to be on the verge of a 'breakthrough' moment. And yet it's an entertaining and oddly persuasive portrayal. He played Charlotte Bronte's menacing hero as more ironic than Byronic, making not merely a gesture towards the audience's sympathy but a face-full of gestures that stopped just short of a theatrical wink. In any case it perfectly matched Rochester's description: 'No judgment, no pity, that look could prise secrets from the blackest souls.'Įxcept Rochester's soul, as inhabited by Toby Stephens, was a purple shade of black. Here she wore an open yet inscrutable expression, knowing in an unknowable sort of way. Now she is a known unknown destined to become a known known.

Having previously appeared on TV for only a couple of minutes, Wilson was until last week what Donald Rumsfeld would term an unknown unknown. In the event, this handsome new four-parter got off to a confident beginning, due in no small part to a splendidly contained performance from Ruth Wilson in the title role. One false move and a scene becomes a sketch.

Is there any viewer over the age of 10 who doesn't know the dark secret locked away upstairs? The real danger at Thornfield is not pyromania but parody. Thus Jane Eyre comes to the screen dragging enough baggage to fill the capacious interior of Thornfield Hall, the gloomy gothic pile in which the story unfolds. It has to work now, and it has to work up against all that's gone before. For better or worse, television cannot afford the luxury of the long game.

Jane eyre 2006 seriale online