In the last two weeks, I have watch the 2015 version of An Inspector Calls and this one had David Thewliss as the Inspector – and then yesterday my wife and I settled down to the 1954 version with Alistair Sim in the role.

The 2015 BBC production was very good as was the casting but I did think that David Thewliss’ acting was just a bit on the wooden side and this was a key role. The rest of the cast though we’re very good indeed.

On the other hand, Alistair Sim was wonderful in the earlier version

RE Guy Hamilton’s film version of J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls 1954 film is based on the 1945 stage play and is a mostly faithful adaptation. Gut Hamilton did a splendid job focusing on the family drama as it unfolds, although we, the audience – and the Birling family – don’t initially have any idea what is coming. It is 1912 and the wealthy and upper class Birling family are having a family celebration when the mysterious Inspector Poole arrives out of the blue to tell them the news of a young woman named Eva Smith (played by the lovely Jane Wenham) who has apparently died from poison that day in the infirmary. Alastair Sim, known mostly for comic roles and for his definitive Scrooge, plays Inspector Poole who, like someone peeling a banana, each time he carefully questions a member of the family, takes off a layer and draws them individually into revealing their involvement with the dead girl. As is soon revealed, the patriarch and matriarch of the Birlings (played by Arthur Young and Olga Lindo), their daughter Sheila (Eileen Moore), their alcoholic and rebellious son Bryan Forbes, qnd Sheila’s fiance played by Gerald Croft (Brian Worth), all had dealings with the young woman prior to her death. As the film goes on, Inspector Poole carefully and deliberately persuades each participant to tell his or her story about Eva. Eva has in her life been forced to use different names, so some of the family don’t at first respond to the name Eva Smith, but when another name is given – Daisy Renton, by the Inspector, there is a visible jolt for Gerald Croft – who instantly realises that he has been involved with her. What a story this is – first rate There is, on tour in the UK at the moment, a theatrical version which we had planned to see but events took over and we failed to make it