the audience applauded

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Alan (David Tennant) and Tricia Hamilton (Sarah Parish) are married with two sons. He's a manager of a property company. He gets hit by a truck and suffers brain damage. He wakes up from a coma with memory loss and unstable behaviors. The family struggles to cope and Tricia has little help. He can't keep his job and they are broke.David Tennant does a good performance of a brain-damaged man. Sarah Parish has a nice turn when she breaks down. The story doesn't really have much drama. It's one incident after another. It doesn't build as much as it's a drip, drip, drip of Alan's outbursts. It doesn't make for a great dramatic movie but it's compelling for people dealing with similar situations.

I'm so glad I taped this film when it came on BBC last month! It blew my mind, so gut wrenching and real. David Tennant is absolutely fabulous in this, even though his character isn't always that easy to like or identify with. The final scene where he plays the song just broke my heart, those eyes....I'm guessing that he made this film in between the Dr. Who series, and that makes it even more of an achievement for me. I just love Dr. Who and yet I saw absolutely nothing of him in Mr. Tennants portrayal of this man who knows that he has changed and struggles to create some sort of new identity and life.great little intense drama!

Recovery is an incredibly moving piece of work, handling the devastating effects of brain injury on not only the individual, but the entire family. Without resorting to preaching or Hollywood sappy endings, Tony Marchant's drama presents a family in crisis in a realistic way.Highest praise goes David Tennant and Sarah Parish for their incredible performances. I had presumed before watching the drama that I would see some of their previous on screen relationship in Blackpool bleed through-- but it never does. Neither actor is recognizable from any previous work, and I didn't see either of them as an actor playing a part during the entire 90 minutes. In addition, Harry Treadaway's performance as the son just on the cusp of starting his own life in university was fantastic - throughout the piece, he shows the torn nature of a teenage boy thrown into the unwilling role as man of the house,At times, nearly every character in the drama is unsympathetic. As the viewer, I wanted to give each of them a good smack to wake up to reality, stop moping, and start adjusting to the rotten but very present change in their lives. But under the same circumstances, I see myself acting like any of them - switching between trying to show the stiff upper lip to desperation to escape to anything, including behavior that is completely unlike myself. It's the show's greatest strength - truth, without sugar coating, to force us all to think what we'd be able to do under the same circumstances.This is a difficult, but must-watch show. I hope that it somehow manages to be shown in the U.S.

When I saw this on TV I was nervous...whats if they messed it up? Millions of families like mine that live with a brain damaged man, in my case my Dad, would be let down. I watched it with my Mum and we both ended up crying, it was so accurate and captured how the family feels as well as the person having suffered the brain injury. The actors were all wonderful and I had no complaints, my Mums told me she hasn't been able to stop thinking about it. I hope this program made many people aware of what it's like living with brain damage and what it's like for the families. More programs like this should be made, I was surprised at how good it was and it's really shook me up emotionally.