Wenlock

I've just watched the third and final episode of To the Ends of the Earth, the BBC adaptation of William Golding's Sea Trilogy, Rites of Passage, Close Quarters and Fire Down Below.

I have to confess that I haven't read the books - after Lord of the Flies (which I read at school), The Spire (at University) and The Inheritors (at Graduate School) I concluded that Golding was unlikely to offer many Happy Ever Afters - so I don't know what of the 750+ pages of the original had to be jettisoned to fit into only 270 minutes of screen time. Nonetheless the series seemed to me to do a great job of capturing the feel of a long sea passage in the early 19th Century. So much so that the final scenes on land in Australia felt rather flat in comparison.

There were, I noticed, a large number of sideburns on display. Jared Harris (son of Richard "Dumbledore" Harris) sported a very impressive pair as Captain Anderson, as did Charles Dance as Sir Henry Somerset. The pictures on the BBC website do not do them justice. But sadly none of the characters discussed their sideburns - or indeed anybody else's - so I could not resolve my earlier problem.

All in all, a wonderful production, and to cap it all, there was a happy ending.