User Reviews

In the final episode of this miniseries, the mood shifts between high drama and low comedy, culminating in poor Alison Wilson entering a nunnery!

As relentless in pursuit of the truth about her lyin' husband as Javert was about Jean Valjean, Elizabeth finally comes to terms with her husband as a pathological liar.

The final program never conclusively demonstrates whether Alec was a bona fide spy for the British government or merely a pathological liar and bigamist. Apparently, he was a combination of the three.

A shell-shocked soldier from the Battle of the Somme in World War I, Alec apparently failed to truly serve his country during the Second World War. The scene with his incarceration in Brixton Prison was nearly the breaking point for Alison. With her husband in jail and with no source of income, she took the children to live with her mother, who always believed that Alec was a phony.

With the help of Father Timothy, Alison eventually discovers a degree of redemption. But not after finding a little waif named Douglass on her doorstep, Alison learns that Alec had a FOURTH wife and yet another mouth to feed.

Alec was a dreamer, and he discovered writing as cathartic. But the world of fiction carried over from the typewriter to reality in the four households he maintained in the postwar years. Four households, and an enormous brood who take a curtain call at the end of this miniseries. O cursed progenitor!!!