On his journey he recalls the events surrounding his original visit, during which he had celebrated his thirteenth birthday and also become besotted with his friend’s older sister Marian, whose family strongly hoped that she would marry the local landowner, Viscount Trimingham.
As for the protagonists, he shot Joanna Vanderham’s Marian as a radiant extension of the sun, while Ben Batt’s Ted suggested a gritty compound of gnarled oak and loamy earth".
Rees singled out Jack Hollington for especial praise, "as smitten young Leo, whose trusting eyes caught brief confused glimpses of his coming expulsion from Eden.
He added, "Sensitively adapted (as all these Sunday-night BBC dramas have been so far) from LP Hartley by Adrian Hodges, it has a/the novel’s intensity, subtlety and complexity of character and theme (innocence, betrayal, the past and what it does to someone).
[2] In Radio Times, Ben Dowell found it to be, "as slow and languid as the long hot summer that young Leo spent with his wealthy school friend Denys [sic]".