Any Human Heart on PBS Masterpiece this Sunday!

Matthew Macfadyen and Hayley Atwell in Any Human Heart

I have been lucky enough to see a preview of the first of three episodes of Any Human Heart, premiering on PBS this coming Sunday night, Feb 13, 2011. It is very good!

This adaptation of a fairly recent novel by William Boyd can probably best be explained as a life in flashbacks. It starts out showing the main character, writer Logan Mountstuart, as an old man (the lovely Jim Broadbent). He is living in a villa in the South of France with piles of books, photos and boxes of journals detailing his very interesting life all around him. As he sorts through these memories, we get to relive his life with him.

Matthew Macfadyen, Jim Broadbent and Sam Claflin as the three phases of Logan Mountstuart

As he travels through his past, starting not at his birth in the exotic sounding Montevideo Uruguay, but as a student at Oxford in 1926, we get to know him through his journal. "I, Logan Mountstuart, do solemnly declare that in this my final year at Oxford, I will lose my virginity." Needless to say, this one has a warning about explicit content right at the beginning. We get to see the loves of his life (in and out of bed) and as well as having the great good fortune to encounter many stunningly gorgeous women, he also stumbles across many famous people. Made me really think of a smarter, English Forest Gump to be honest. Not that that is a bad thing. It certainly adds spice to the story to have Logan hanging out with Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming and The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (played to a tee by Tom Hollander and Gillian Anderson).

Well, I won't say any more other than that I think this is a wonderful addition to the Masterpiece lineup this winter and I look forward to seeing the next two episodes to see what else Logan Gump gets up to in his travels through the 20th century.