The Child in Time

[RhiannonOHara]

On on Sunday night. Anyone interested?

I haven't read the book but I do like a bit of Cumberbatch.

So no clues what happened to Kate? In the book?

So no clues what happened to Kate? In the book?

It's 20+ years since I read it, but as far as I recall no, there's not, because not knowing anything is what you have to come to terms with when someone disappears without trace.

They would have had cctv operating by those tills and over the doorway!!

Just finished watching on catch up. FWIW it is a pretty faithful representation of the novel: there are one or two major changes related to Charles's death and the birth of the baby at the end. Otherwise a few things were changed up to look more contemporary or simplify the plot. I agree the school scene didn't work at all. (I wonder why they didn't set it in the 80s so it would?! )
The plot lines with Charles/the reading and writing committee/the government are put into context so much more in the novel. It also fleshes out Steven's history and relationships with the other characters so you actually get the chance to feel for them.
You've got to read it if you fancied watching the programme, imo, as I've found it a hard one to beat since I read it in the mid 90s!

@Badgers All that government stuff was baffling though. Were they trying to outlaw childhood or something? WTF?

Basically yes. Charles apologised to Steven for betraying the committee - and his own politics - by writing the handbook.

I loved it. Not read the book and not usually a Cumberbatch fan, but I thought it was brilliant. The idea of children living on somewhere, caught between worlds, whether before they are born, when they are lost or die, or when we become adults.
I absolutely sobbed at the end, when he took her hand, and seemed to have made his peace with the fact that she is somewhere, somehow still with them, still a part of them, just as she always was. Seeing his son looking at him on the tube from another place in time on the way to the hospital was beautiful.

It reminded me of spirit babies, i'm not much for woo normally, but I believe that my middle child has been with me before, it's too personal to explain, but the minute he was born, I knew when I had last been with him, and now he was finally home. Child in Time is a perfect way to describe it.

The book has to be better, surely

It's written by Ian McEwan so no.

The BBC tweets about it last night were really inappropriate I thought. They didn't match up with seriousness of the plot at all. They were just tweeting gifs of BC with down wiv da kidz comments. Really weird.

Ian McEwan dislike purely my own opinion. Obviously many many people love his work and he is talented but he's very much not my thing.

Yes we do Enid, you big meanie

The trailers were very misleading, focusing on the supermarket scene. We thought we were getting a crime drama. It wasn't about the child going missing at all, it was a story about grief.

Just reading the book by coincidence. I thought the programme did a reasonable job of depicting the theme but it's difficult in 90 mins to get it across properly.
Both parents saw the little boy, her outside the front door and him on the tube so it was clear she would be expecting.
No need for them to bring it into modern day - there were no mobiles or social media/trolls in the 80s.

I totally missed the little boy.

I saw it the same way as choccywoccy, I found it very moving. A story of loss, of carrying on, and I loved the time slips. I thought it was fascinating - I want to read the book now.

I think the programme was the TV equivalent of a skim read!
It was all a bit rushed and odd especially if you weren't familiar with the book.

It was fairly true to the book - unfortunately as I thought the book was odd. I don't know I would have made sense of it without having read the book. It really wasn't about Kate going missing, although that was all that was in the trailer.

A two-year-old girl, Katrice Lee, disappeared from a NAAFI supermarket in Germany in 1981; I assume the original idea for the story was based on this.

I often wonder about Katrice Lee and Damian Nettles. Such sadness

It's not a thriller. It's an adaptation of a literary novel so some things in it will not adhere to normal tv drama conventions. I liked it and liked the book too.

Oh was it a one off? I watched it thinking it was a series!

Everything just seemed so superficial.

I enjoyed it, but was frustrated by what got left out from the book - the whole Thatcherite dystopia, the backdrop of climate change, Thelma's quantum physics background.... if you hadn't read the book, I would imagine the whole Childcare Manual thing was pretty confusing.

The theme of grief came through well, but with the rest, so much had been left out that it just didn't hang together well enough, I thought.

McEwan's books don't easily lend themself to screen adaptation, to be fair.

Seeing his son looking at him on the tube from another place in time on the way to the hospital was beautiful.

I thought he saw himself, not his son.

The book was fantastic. Benedict Cumberbatch was terrific, as was his daughter. His wife was too smiley and happy - she was traumatised in the book.

In the book, doesn't she give birth in her cottage and he just gets there in time? It was profoundly moving.

I loved it, although it did feel a bit rushed. Might have been better as a two-parter over two hours. Poor DH though - he'd never read the book so he didn't realise at the end that it was a one-off and said how nice it was to have end credits without spoilers for the next episode. He was expecting a nice tidy finding-Kate resolution in five weeks' time, I think!