Review of Greenfingers

No wonder the makers of "The Queen" chose Helen Mirren for the lead.In "Greenfingers" her characterisation of a TV gardener is surely based on H.M.,herself a keen woman of the soil.All that was missing was the ever - present bunch of spoiled snapping corgis digging up the borders.This is a movie that panders to what presumably is seen as the Americans' preferred image of us Brits as a bunch of basically good - natured buffoons living in a neverland of Cotswold stone houses,riding bicycles across streams set in lush rolling countryside.We have a few criminals - all sincerely repentant - some even innocent who are looked after by benign smiling governors and firm but fair prison officers who all live happily in a big old country house made of marzipan. P.G. Wodehouse might just have got away with this sort of stuff,but there is none of his sense of self - mockery here.We are quite solemnly told that the main character murdered his brother,but it's all right because he didn't mean too,and the old guy with cancer murdered three of his wives then gave himself up because he realised he was dangerous. Duh?If you are going to make a movie about prisoners redeeming themselves through gardening then do the job properly - don't sugar the pill by making them all icky - wicky sweethearts.Surely the whole point of the exercise is that gardening is therapeutic to nasty bastards,not Noddy and Big Ears.