YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Prismark10 Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are the writing team that wrote the sublime Porridge as well as The Likely Lads. I want to remind people of this just in case someone watched this and thought they were two substandard writers who deserved to be taken to a forest late at night and shot.Spies of Warsaw takes place in the run up to the second world war as various spies from major countries converge in Poland hoping to gain influence in the future of the country. David Tennant plays a French military attaché Colonel Jean-François Mercier who runs a small network of agents and Janet Montgomery as his love interest Anna Skarbek.What should be an interesting tale of espionage, intrigue and love turns out to be dull, flat and uninspired. Its mind numbingly tedious.David Tennant plays his character with a mockney accent. The same accent the Scot used for his Doctor Who. You never at once feel drawn in by any of the characters, care about them or even feel involved with the plot. It even ends on a damp note. Not once did I think we were in Poland or or . I actually reckoned the drama was shot somewhere in Belfast where they dress buildings up to look unconvincingly like Nazi .Director Coky Giedroyc has to take the blame for bringing such a poor script to screen. Its interesting that he was responsible for shooting the original unaired pilot of 'Sherlock' before it was reworked and an experienced film director became involved and re-shot an expanded story with great success.

kieran-mclaughlin1 Why do they have to tinker with a great story? Alan Furst's novel is moody, atmospheric and evocative of the period, pre-WW2 Warsaw. The BBC adaptation is lifeless and sterile. The screenwriters have tried to cherry-pick the salient parts of the novel, but all this has achieved is a confusing storyline with no sense of continuity. David Tennant is hopelessly miscast as Mercier, which in turn ensures the viewer will find the series pretty unbelievable. Janet Montgomery's portrayal of Anna Szarbek(Skarbek? Why?) is unfortunately not very likable, which in turn means their relationship suffers on the screen. Both Tennant and Montgomery have mishandled the relationship between Mercier and Szarbek, which is one of the critical drivers of Mercier's actions. A number of other characters (Jourdain, Dr Lapp) have been similarly poorly written and portrayed. Very disappointing all round. I just hope they don't try and adapt any more of Alan Furst's novels - fans of Furst's novels will be very disheartened.

Mouth Box Spies of Warsaw (BBC Four) was probably meant for BBC1, but then someone at the BBC sat down and watched it.As we know, it's not currently very fashionable for BBC executives to take an interest in BBC programmes, but on this occasion it's just as well one of them looked at it before making the mistake of showing it to a larger audience.Adapted by the usually brilliant Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais from a novel by Alan Furst, the first episode was actually only about ninety minutes long. It felt, however, like it was on the air for about 12 weeks.Even in the first ten minutes one could have timed the action by calendar. Sorry, did I use the word, "action"? Slip of the pen. At one point, near the end of the episode, I found myself asking the question, "Is this still on?" It's difficult to say what happened, the plot being revealed at such a painfully leisurely pace. The gist of it appeared to be that David Tennant – a French spy in bright red pantaloons with stripes down the side – fell very slowly in love with Janet Montgomery, the mistress of a dull, whiskered Russian exile.Then we were very slowly introduced to a mysterious Countess, who very slowly turned out not to be a Countess, and was then very slowly strangled by some Nazis. Oh, there was a brasserie with a bullet-hole in the mirror above table 14. I think this might have been significant in some way. Or maybe it wasn't.There was certainly great attention to period detail, which helped to slow down the action even more. Then there was the usual confusion when it came to who should speak with which accent. The Nazis spoke in German with subtitles in English. The Polish spoke English with Polish accents. The French spoke English with 'Allo 'Allo accents. Everyone spoke very, very, slowly indeed.Tennant was wasted as the enigmatic, complex and conflicted Mercier. He doesn't really do enigmatic and complex, does he? He does quirky and eccentric. About twenty minutes in, he had a stab at being deep and conflicted, but all we really wanted was to see him whip out his sonic screwdriver and pull one of his funny faces.Did I mention that it was quite slow? I still have episode two of Spies of Warsaw on my TIVO. I think it's going to be there for a very, very long time.Read regular TV reviews at Mouthbox.co.uk

geoffcoo What a marvellous 2 parter. The acting and settings were very good indeed. The story moved very nicely, building the appropriate tensions throughout. Based on a novel by Alan Furst, of whom I had never heard, it was historically accurate(with the exception of some British beer mugs in Prague). I hope the makers will give us more of the novels in the same format.The first part was sufficient to make me buy the first of the Night Soldiers novels by Alan Furst. Having already read it, I shall now read the rest of the series, in sequence, so a way to go before I reach Spies of Warsaw.