Handsome and entertaining enough, this film demonstrates in no uncertain terms the well-nigh impossibility of making a really satisfying film out of a substantial book. Jarrold has chosen to pluck out the easy bit of Evelyn Waugh's celebrated 1945 novel - the doomed love story - and left the complex treatments of the lure and snares of Catholicism, the meaning of sin, the death of a way of life, the nature of friendship and the need to belong, scattered along the way like discarded sweet wrappers, as if they are merely its glossy embellishments. Not to mention most of the humour.

Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), aspiring artist from a dour, undemonstrative middle class background, meets and gets taken up by aristocrat Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) at Oxford. A deep relationship develops between the two. Where the book is deliberately vague and presents the relationship, as many things in the book, undefined, wistful and subtle, script writer Andrew Davies wades in all guns blazing as usual and underlines the sexual nature of Sebastian's feelings: a petulant moue here, a kiss there, an arm flung over a shoulder always more than a gesture of affection. Staying at the Flytes' vast stately home over the summer, where he's seen as a ‘safe' companion by Sebastian's formidable mother Lady Marchmain, in contrast to the fast dubious set at Oxford he has been knocking around with, Charles becomes besotted with all aspects the eccentric, beautiful, Catholic family, including Sebastian's sister Julia (Hayley Atwell).

Comparisons are not always helpful, but those viewers old enough to remember the acclaimed TV serial of the book from 30 years ago will find themselves missing the long exposition, the texture, the character building and the slow burn of changing relationships that the 11 episodes allowed. Here Charles has scarcely met Julia when his affections are captured and sealed with a kiss - in the book it creeps upon him, all part of the warm, odd, engulfing family life he, only child of a cold father, is beguiled by. This Charles, though excellently played by Matthew Goode, is too at ease in this alien environment he longs for for himself. The comedy and untrammelled, innocent pleasures of Oxford life are severely curtailed, with Aloysius the teddy bear, important signifier of Sebastian's attractive but damaging avoidance of adulthood, a mere token figure. There's unnecessary fiddling with chronological structure, all part of making the affair between Charles and Julia the central plot, which muddles the time scale, specially as, fashions apart, the characters never seem to age. Other than a couple of good cameos by Patrick Malahide as Charles' father and Ed Stoppard as Sebastian's big brother Bridey, the best of Waugh's mordant humour, which in the book is present through even the darkest scenes, is gone. And the peculiar iron grip of Catholicism at its core is short-changed, so that Julia's final decision seems more whimsical than crucial to the central theme.

On its own terms, as a well-made period, three-way romance, it will just about do, with its fine-looking frocks, hairdos and locations and solid performances. It has its good points, particularly Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, opening out the character to show human cracks in her pious control-freakery, and a nice understated end. But for a book which appears on so many's ‘favourite novels' list (including staunch Catholics and left wing atheists), it's no more than a lite edition.