HARRY POTTER/OLDER AND DARKER

The waiting is over. Everyone around the wold can now sit back and savour the latest Potter phenomenon. Although some people will already be thinking about the NEXT film.

Or even worse, the film of the next/ last book. Please. Desist. Treasure what you have for awhile. If only because it is so good. An edgier, more mature Harry, with darker edges and a screen kiss at the centre.

How different it might have been. Not so long ago the decision to entrust the latest version a virtually unknown director, David Yates, was regarded as something of a risk. Yates had made some stunning TV dramas, notably State of Play and Sex Traffic, but these gloomy dramas might have suggested that he was unsuited to the project rather than just what it needed.

They were all about trying to save the real world from real evil and found justice a very messy thing.

Yates himself is on record as having expressed doubts about whether this was where his talents might be best used. Of course, he had never read the books, so he was at a bit of a disadvantage. But once he had read them, he was hooked. More than that, he went at the script with relish, enjoying the freedom to be fanciful, to create huge, surreal scenes instead of having to deal with gritty, sordid humanity.

And yet, something worth noting: for many viewers, the most terrifying threat will be teacher Dolores Umbridge, in charge of Defense Against The Dark Arts, played in immaculate pink by Imelda Staunton, as her "real" danger is more immediate than the scariness of the more fantastical Voldemort. This potency is thanks to Yates.

In this Potter it is not only Harry who triumphs, it is Yates as well. Although Harry is the only to get kissed, so it remains his show after all.

Revised July 12, 2007