Any Human Heart

Any Human Heart was broadcast in late November/early December on Channel 4, and I'm only just getting around to watching it. And it's wonderful.

Based on the novel by William Boyd, Any Human Heart follows the life of Logan Mountstuart, a writer who lived through some of the most important parts of the last century. The television programme begins with Jim Broadbent as the elderly Logan, looking through his journals and retracing his life; seemingly as he is about to die.

The story begins properly in 1926, at Oxford University. A young Logan (Sam Claflin) is in his final year at Oxford and sets a wager with his two best friends Peter Scabius (Freddie Fox) and Ben Leeping that they will lose their virignities. Peter finds his 'one' in the stable girl Tess (Holliday Grainger), which leds to him being almost disowned by his parents. During a time when Peter is banned from seeing Tess, Logan fills his shoes quite quickly, but soon finds himself in a far more intellectual passion for 'undergraduette' Land Fothergill (Charity Wakefield). After the death of his father, to whom Logan promises to look after the family business, he travels to Paris to meet Ben, and whilst there, having coverted with Russian prostitutes and Ernest Hemingway (Julian Ovenden), Logan decides tht writing is the only career for him. When he gains an agent, he also finally gains Land, and they live in apparent bliss. His novel, The Girl Factory, is branded 'obscene' and yet is a commercial hit, however, when he proposes to Land she rejects him, saying he is living an 'empty life' and that his book is rubbish. On the rebound, Logan finds himself marrying Lottie (Emerald Fennell) much to the suprise of his friends.

A few years later Lottie gives birth to a son, but Logan (now Matthew Macfayden) soon leaves looking for work and travel upon the commercial failure of his novel The Cosmopolitans, a critique of the poets he met in Paris. When in Spain, he meets Freya (Hayley Atwell), whom he is immediatly attracted to and on his return to England he starts a love affair with her; when he leaves to work as a journalist in civil war Spain, she reveals to him that she is pregnant.

All this happens in one episode. Yet the narrative is pretty tight, it doesn't feel as though you're jumping around in time too much, as it flows pretty nicely between the decades. There is also a somewhat strange use of a boy in a boat, apparently Logan's first memory as he is trying to work out if he is the boy in the boat or an observor on the bank-the people on said bank are Logan at various forms of his life; Broadbent, Macfayden & Claflin, and occasionally people such as his father. To me, this seems a bit like an interruption in the story; it doesn't seem to make all that much sense.

The performances also aide the flow of time; as the young Logan Claflin is good at being awkward and naieve, whilst as the older Macfayden is good at being a man in love and yet also retaining his awkwardness in social situations. Macfayden also carries across some of the habits that Claflin gave Logan, which makes the passing of time more realistic. It was great to see both these actors in work straight after their work in Pillars of the Earth, and Claflin's performances give me hope that his work in POTC 4 will not be quite as wooden as that of Orlando Bloom.

In the supporting cast, Atwell plays Freya as a bit of a seductress, she knows exactly what will happen between her and Logan from the very moment they meet, and it is only at the end of the episode that we begin to see Freya as a strong woman. Wakefield is also good as Land Fothergill (what a name), who seems less interested in love, and more in her burgeoning career as a politican-she loses interest in Logan when his book is a commercial rather than critical success, suggesting that she was maybe only interested in a leg-up in society.

I will admit to also being rather excited when the lovely Julian Ovenden popped up; and similarly when Tom Hollander appeared alongside Gillian Anderson, playing the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson, who both, judging by the preview of episode 2 will come to play an important part in Logan's life.

I thoroughly enjoyed Any Human Heart, it exceeded my expectations and I hope that it sets a precedent for Channel 4 to produce more solid adaptations of novels or original dramas in the future, hopefully these will take over its reputation for Big Brother and bad documentaries.