[1] Terry Ramsey, reviewing the first episode in The Daily Telegraph found himself "sternly unmoved" by its "relentlessly emotional, heart-tugging story of tragedy, its gushing orchestral music and its soft-focus shots of people with quivering lower lips and moistening eyes".
Greg Wise in particular was convincing as Lewis’s emotionally vacant father, while Nathaniel Parker snaffled up the chance to embody a cold-hearted bully in a blazer", Rees added that, "And yet something in the storyboarding fatally depleted the atmosphere of accumulating tension.
The plot frogmarched disjointedly from one crisis to the next, giving important scenes insufficient room to breathe and bringing a psychological coarseness to fine-grained undercurrents of feeling".
Raeside was equally impressed with Hattie Morahan's portrayal of his drowned mother, writing, "She is so perfectly cast, the lack of her is palpable on screen.
The tone set by Iain Softley’s beautifully restrained direction and the careful use of music creates a real feeling of loss from the start, just as in the book, but he somehow avoids all hammy visual foreshadowing and narrative signposting, so often used to gee a plot along.
"[4] In The Independent on Sunday, Ellen E. Jones found that the adaptation, "brings something unusual to television; a portrait of the conformist and snobbish side of post-war Britain.
In a medium that’s enamoured of bunting and home-baking (The Great British Bake Off), nurturing communities (Call the Midwife), and the benefits of a stiff upper lip in civilian life (Foyle’s War), this is a useful and welcome corrective".