He's very different - quite a lot older, and rather more spiky and combative. Last week's Tolly was more like the one in the book.

Do you mean, different from the one in the first book, or different from the one in the second one? But I agree, and he's a bit too old for all the imaginative stuff that Little Tolly was so good at.

I like Maggie Smith as the grandmother, but do you think they have put in too much backstory that wasn't in the book?

Well, I don't want to know about his parents or the war. The story should be more insular as it was on the tv version.

I think I agree - but these adapters always want to add things.

I know I appeared to be critical of the ending of the tv version but I only meant it should have had a end of the holiday type ending to round it off... I liked the lack of things and people , it added to the atmos. The atmos in this version is being trampled on, for me.

They've introduced a few issues because that's what film makers do these days. Maybe trying to attract a more adult audience?

Trouble with having all these extra people is they're all standing aroind doing nowt.

Trouble with having all these extra people is they're all standing around doing nowt.

Which ones are standing around? I don't think the housekeeper is in the book - I think it was just Boggis, and fewer eighteenth-century servants got a mention, but it was a big house of the era, so they would have been there. The housekeeper is the only extra one, and she seems to be doing quite a lot.

The ghostly flash mob servants

But an eighteenth-century house would have had servants.

But an eighteenth-century house would have had servants.

They're ok when they are doing servanty things. Just look a bit surplus to requurements when they stood around doing naught.

Pies were big in them days. It's like Magwich on the marsh.

If people can walk through him, why can't he walk through walls?

Because he doesn't believe he can.

Harriet Walter in a sympathetic role.

If it's Xmas and the war is still on, why would the germans release POWs?

Because they're losing the war.

Maggie Smith is always good, in whatever role.