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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A sexy role at last!, 24 June 2004
Author: taranakitimaru from London, England

I really enjoyed this programme. Steve Coogan's usual roles involve him being slightly if not completely obnoxious for laughs, showing complete ineptitude in social situations.

The Pepys role however, really let him show another side of his character, and I'd love to see more. I found the character to be sexy, vulnerable and irreverent, intelligent and naughty, a very appealing proposition. Like Rowan Atkinson in the earlier Black Adder series, he shows funny men can be extremely sexy when they take up struggle of an everyman who rather than being the lowest common denominator, is closer to the average thinking man. Someone who can be rational and intelligent, who loses but sometimes wins in social and sexual games, and in love, and has real emotional struggles. More parts like this for Coogan would be great. There is enough buffoonery on the political scene to make me crave sexy funny intellectuals in entertainment. Am I alone?

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Unfair critics, 17 December 2003
10/10
Author: messed_up from Durham, England

I read a few reviews of this before I saw it and they all said Steve Coogan acted like "Alan Partridge in a wig", well I'm sorry but he did nothing of the sort! He did a wonderful job, possibly his best acting job yet in my opinion. It is totally unfair for people to compare everything that Steve Coogan does to Alan Partridge. He is a very talented actor and watching this last night I think he proves it!

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
This is brilliant! Steve Coogan is clever, witty and very good, 5 December 2004
Author: Debbie Kean (debbie.kean@gmail.com) from New Zealand

This is the movie that Steve Coogan said he wanted to make. His desire was to play someone morally ambiguous and he succeeded brilliantly! His Samuel Pepys was a real person, complex, desiring to be good, and yet aware that society and his own nature conspired against him. Lou Doillion as Elisabeth and Sally Rogers as Betty are also superb - and although when I started watching, I was afraid I would keep seeing Alan Partridge, that wasn't the case. The dialogue was witty, the story well told (brilliantly, in fact) and other standout characters were Will Hewer and Lord Montagu, cleverly cynical and tolerant of Pepys' earnest concern for his job and doing the best in a society that expected him to be corrupt. All praise to the writer and all the actors.

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
More complete cast list?, 17 December 2003
Author: Andy Grant (andy_grant) from St. Albans, England

I found this an entertaining one-off which certainly enhanced my knowledge of Pepys above the previous level of "didn't he write a diary at some point in the past?"

Being a fan of Coogan it's always difficult to look beyond your expectations of what he's going to be like based on his well-known previous characters. I'm sure it would have become easier had this been stretched out into a mini-series but there you go.

Interesting to see this so soon after the Charles II Power & Passion mini-series which finished a few weeks back. Being contemporaneous (get me!) the two programmes shared a lot of the historical background and quite a few of the characters.

In summary, well worth watching - even without considering the not-insignificant sexual content and gratuitous boob shots :-)

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