Too much of everything

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Flowers" is dark, funny, poignant, and smart. A terrible beauty. I couldn't look away, and couldn't stop watching until I'd finished the entire series in a single sitting.Will Sharpe's superb writing is brought to life by an equally superb cast of actors who give stunning performances. Barratt and Coleman in serious roles are a revelation. Sophia Di Martino and Daniel Rigby are convincingly fragile, but still relatable and even likable. Sharpe's acting is as powerful as his writing, adopting the role of Shun -- the Japanese glue barely holding this broken English family together."Flowers" is easily some of the best television I've seen, and I'll be following Sharpe's career with great interest.

Remember when Channel 4 was home to edgy, intelligent comedy, subversive music, cult films and late-night, stoner-vision staples such as Vidz? Me too. Albeit through a hazy vignette next to memories of carving flints and ducking pterodactyls.All the more surprising then that Channel 4 should spring Flowers on us. At first glance a sort of grim fairytale about a dysfunctional family living in darkest Surrey, but also an often genuinely funny and heartfelt character study which has had me both laughing out loud and tearing up more often than I'd want to admit.The characters are of course what drive Flowers. Julian Barratt, as a depressed children's author, gives every bit as fantastic a performance as you'd expect, while a special mention deserves to go to lesser known Sophia Di Martino, whose portrayal of creepy, socially isolated daughter, Amy, could've been one-dimensional, but is played with an almost profound depth and sensitivity, and soon becomes someone you genuinely find yourself caring about.Will Sharpe's writing displays a maturity beyond his years, along with a wonderfully surreal and original sense of humour.Of course not everyone will warm to it. It starts off depicting a failed suicide attempt – clearly its main intent is not winning over Daily Mail readers or the easily offended. It pulls no punches in its depiction of depression, but also manages to find a strange beauty in it. It's somewhat near-the-knuckle in Sharpe's depiction of his own Japanese heritage, and may even raise a few eyebrows with its tongue-in-cheek conflating of "feminist" and "lesbian".But the whole thing is sewn together with such rare intelligence and sensitivity, not to mention beautiful cinematography, that you never get the feeling it's opting for cheap laughs.There's only one more episode to go, and I'm already missing it; looking to re-watching it; and annoyingly and incessantly pushing it on family and friends.

how did this get commissioned? total rubbish. not funny, not engaging, sophomoric. A terrible waste of money and talent. At some point there needs to be an actor's union that allows members not to appear in career killing shows like flowers. it is difficult to review something this bad when one word, "crap" sums it up. I often think that bad drugs make bad television and this confirms this. The only excuse I can come up with for this series is bad drugs and blackmail. Stay away from this, it is a total waste of time, unless, unless, you are a fan of bad independent theater, which is where this series belongs.... like a three day run in a rainy February in a church basement in Dundee.

Dark, seemingly depressing too at first. However, the masterful use of the surreal and the perverse is a delight. This is Olivia Coleman at her very best, playing a wife suppressing so much turmoil that she's plainly the more troubled of the couple - in spite of Julian Barrett's superb portrayal of a suicidal husband. The addition of two deeply troubled but intriguingly bizarre "children" (living at home at 25) makes for even better viewing. Each twist of the story and development of the plot leaves me all the more enraptured - rare indeed in any TV comedy.This is the sort of TV that only gets made when TV commissioners stop thinking about viewing figures and pandering to the hoi polloi , and instead go for something profound and amusing. The BBC should really be in the vanguard of such things, but they're always too busy in internal politics and demographical soul-searching these days. Thank the Good Lord for Channel 4.