Life In Squares

2015
6.5| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 27 July 2015 Ended
Producted By: Tiger Aspect
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0649cyj
Synopsis

The three-part series centres on the close and often fraught relationship between sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, and Vanessa’s sexually complicated alliance with gay artist Duncan Grant as they, and their group of like-minded friends, navigate their way through love, sex and artistic life through the first half of the 20th century.

... View More
Stream Online

Stream with Prime Video

Director

Producted By

Tiger Aspect

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime. Watch Now

Trailers & Images

Reviews

Sindre Kaspersen Swedish television and film director Simon Kaijser's television miniseries which was written by English author and screenwriter Amanda Coe, is inspired by real events which took place in England in the early 20th century. It premiered on English television in 2015, was shot on locations in England and is a UK production which was produced by producer Rhonda Smith. It tells the story about a twenty-three-year-old author who was born in Kensington, Middlesex, London in England in the early 1880s.Distinctly and precisely directed by Swedish filmmaker Simon Kaijser, this quietly paced and somewhat fictional tale which is narrated by and mostly from the main characters' viewpoints, draws a perspicacious portrayal of a twenty-six-year-old sister. While notable for its distinctly atmospheric milieu depictions, cinematography by cinematographer Allan Almond, production design by production designer David Roger and costume design by costume designer Claire Anderson, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven story about English history which was made a century after an English painter named Vanessa Stephen Bell (1879-1961) and a Scottish painter from Rothiemurchus, Aviemore, Scotland named Duncan Grant (1885-1978) arrived in Charleston, Sussex, England (1916), depicts several interrelated studies of character and contains a great and timely score by composer Edmund Butt.This conversational and cinematographic retelling which is set in England in the early 20th century more than a century after a photograph called "Julia Jackson" (1867) and where poets and painters create a group, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, rhythmic continuity, comment by Leonard: "Our whiff of shot in the cause of freedom." and the reverent acting performances by English actresses Lydia Leonard, Phoebe Fox, Catherine McCormack and Eve Best. An androgynous miniseries.
Prismark10 Life in Squares is a confusing and dull three part period drama about the tangled love affairs of the Bloomsbury Group.Virginia (Lydia Leonard) married Leonard Woolf (Al Weaver) who soon realises that she is mentally fragile, while her sister Vanessa (Phoebe Fox) turned her affections towards Duncan Grant (James Norton) who teams up with her and his male lover. In fact Grant is the love and leave em kind when it comes to male relationships.As the drama progresses the younger actors are replaced by an older set of actors and the Bloomsbury group attitude towards free love and creativity gets bleaker as World War Two approaches and losses are felt.Amanda Coe's script was not easy to follow and seemed sparse which explains why I felt bored and listless.Scandinavian director Simon Kaijser goes for Nordic noir pacing and a murky look which did not work for this three parter that needed to be faster moving and brighter.
ccookiemail It's part two of Life in Squares tonight about the Bloomsbury Group and Virginia Woolf on BBC2 tonight at 21.00. In the first episode we romped through nearly ten years and saw how the embryonic group grew out of some Cambridge male graduates in the modern Bohemian squares of Bloomsbury. They were young free and single and OK. for money and everything was exciting. We saw how the complex relationships of Vanessa (nee Stephen) Bell, Virginia (nee Stephen) Woolf and the death of Thoby Stephen who brought the group together for their Thursday evening meetings. Painter Vanessa Stephen and her writer sister Virginia embarked on a life of unexpected and emerged from the whaleboned strictures of Victoria England. It was a remarkably accurate portrayal and covered a lot of ground in a short hour long program. I loved the lighting and treatment of some difficult subjects which set up tonight's second episode for an exciting continuation.
foreverknight47 I TRIED (I really did) with the first episode of LIFE IN SQUARES but after twenty minutes my brain started to dig a tunnel through my spine and tried to escape the UTTER TEDIUM of this smug little series. Worse, the episode moved with all the speed and urgency of a glacier, unlike my brain digging the escape tunnel. It was like being trapped in a room with a gang of self-regarding teenage Hipsters and Emos all moving in slow motion because of clinical depression. Frankly (and this is rare) I gave up after that twenty minutes and I won't be returning.Were the Bloomsbury Set a significant collection of artistic types who paved the way for the freedoms we enjoy today or a bunch of tedious and ultimately irrelevant posers only of interest to similar posers who write long serials for the BBC? Discuss.