Capturing Mary

An elderly woman turns up at the gates of a huge London house and asks the young man looking after it to let her in. That's how 'Capturing Mary' opens. Stephen Poliakoff wrote and directed it for the BBC, with HBO coproducing, as a companion piece to 'Joe's Palace': the mansion and the young caretaker, Joe, are the same, but this time the story looks back.

The visitor is Mary Gilbert, a journalist who was one of the brightest young things in 1950s London and went to the parties held in that house, where aristocrats, industrialists, press barons and actors mingled. As she walks through the rooms with Joe, she tells him how one of those nights she met Greville White, a charming man who seemed to know the darkest secrets of high society.

That meeting changed her life. Through her memories, the film shows how Greville's shadow followed her for decades, from the fifties into the sixties, and why, all these years later, she still can't get him out of her head.

Maggie Smith, an Oscar nominee for 'Gosford Park' and the Dowager Countess in 'Downton Abbey', plays the older Mary, and Ruth Wilson, a few years before 'Luther', plays her young. Comedian David Walliams turns to drama as Greville, Danny Lee Wynter is back as Joe, and Gemma Arterton, still at drama school, got her first professional role here, shortly before 'Quantum of Solace'.

BBC Two showed it on 12 November 2007, eight days after BBC One premiered 'Joe's Palace'. Adrian Johnston won the BAFTA for Original Television Music for his score, and Smith was nominated for an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie in 2010. British critics were split between those who found it weirdly compelling and those who thought it long and insubstantial, and the 4 outlets collected on Movienco give it an average of 5.3 out of 10.

• Drama