--- title: "Mrs Biggs" year: 2012 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/mrs-biggs" fi1m_id: "mrs-biggs" imdb_id: "tt2186101" tmdb_id: 48666 wikidata_id: "Q6929928" fi1m_score: 74 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-10-07T16:14:58.875970+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T16:15:33.465457+00:00" region: "NZ" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Mrs Biggs (2012) Created by Jeff Pope · 40m · Drama, Crime ## Identity Mrs Biggs - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/mrs-biggs - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** mrs-biggs - **IMDb ID:** tt2186101 - **TMDB ID:** 48666 - **Wikidata ID:** Q6929928 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2186101/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/48666, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6929928 **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Her father is the frightening one; the train robbers are merely unreliable > Jeff Pope’s five-part account of the Great Train Robbery from the kitchen rather than the trackside is well acted and well made, and Sheridan Smith is the reason to stay. It is also at least an episode longer than it needs to be. ## Synopsis Surrey, 1957. Charmian Powell (Sheridan Smith), still in school uniform, takes the commuter train each morning from a house run by her father Bernard (Adrian Scarborough), a headmaster who treats his family as pupils, and her mother Muriel (Caroline Goodall), who keeps the peace by saying little. On the train she meets Ronald Biggs (Daniel Mays), a carpenter from south London with a prison record and an easy grin. Her father forbids it. She goes anyway. What follows across five episodes is the marriage: a rented flat, two small boys, Ronald’s promises to stay straight and his habit of breaking them, and an old friend, Bruce Reynolds (Jay Simpson), who turns up with talk of a mail train, a signal and a night in August 1963. ## Review The Great Train Robbery of 8 August 1963 has been filmed before, and nearly always from the trackside: the gang, the signal, the mailbags. Jeff Pope, who created and wrote *Mrs Biggs*, starts six years earlier and stays indoors. His subject is Charmian Powell, the Surrey headmaster’s daughter who married Ronald Biggs, and his five episodes are about what it is to be married to a man who is cheerful, affectionate and not to be relied on for anything. It is good television, carefully made and well acted, and it is about an episode too long. Sheridan Smith is on screen for nearly all of it and she is the reason to stay. She plays Charmian first as a schoolgirl who has worked out that the quickest way out of her father’s house is a man her father will hate, then as a young wife and mother, and she does the ageing without tricks, mostly by how she stands and how long she waits before answering. Daniel Mays plays Biggs as a man who agrees with whoever spoke last. He is funny, he is tender with the children, and he cannot look Charmian in the eye when he has been out all night. Mays never asks us to forgive him, which is why we almost do. The performance we have not been able to shake belongs to Adrian Scarborough. Bernard Powell is a small man in a cardigan who never raises his voice, and we were more frightened of him across a dinner table than of anyone in the gang. Scarborough does it with pauses. He asks Charmian a question, lets her answer, and then says nothing for a second longer than is bearable, and the whole house goes still. Caroline Goodall’s Muriel spends those silences looking at her plate. Paul Whittington, who directs all five episodes, holds the camera on the table and lets it happen. Fabian Wagner shoots the Powell house in brown and bottle green with the curtains half drawn, and saves daylight for the scenes where Charmian is out of it: the train, the street, the first flat. It is a plain scheme and it works. Every time she goes back through her parents’ front door the light drops, and we felt our shoulders go up with hers. Bryony Marks’s score is piano and a few strings and knows when to stop; the period songs are placed sparingly rather than for nostalgia. Ben Lester and Mark Atkin, the editors, keep the robbery, when it comes, brisk and mostly unseen. Their more interesting decision is to keep cutting back to Charmian in a kitchen, not knowing, which is where the serial’s loyalties lie. Those loyalties are also its problem. Pope is so firmly on Charmian’s side that Biggs is let off more lightly than he deserves, and what happened on the track that night is dealt with in a line or two. Jay Simpson’s Bruce Reynolds arrives with the gang and departs with it, and the people around the marriage, played by Tom Brooke, Jack Lowden and Claire Rushbrook among others, are drawn briskly but never deeply. The 15 certificate is for language and a few hard moments, not for anything the series dwells on. The second half separates the couple, as the record says it must, and we will leave it at that except to say the pace slows. Charmian’s waiting, which grips over two episodes, is harder to sustain over four, and one later episode circles a single decision for its full forty minutes when twenty would have done. The reviews so far have been warm and we are warm too, with that reservation. Watch the first two episodes in one sitting. After that, take them one a night, which is how it was built and how it best survives its own length. *Fi1m score 74, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Mrs Biggs worth watching?** *Mrs Biggs* is worth watching for anyone who wants the Great Train Robbery told from the kitchen rather than the trackside, and we scored it 74. Sheridan Smith carries all five episodes as Charmian, and Adrian Scarborough is quietly frightening as her father. It runs at least an episode longer than it needs to, and the second half slows. **How long is Mrs Biggs, and what is it rated?** *Mrs Biggs* has episodes of about 40m. It is a drama and crime series. **Where can I watch Mrs Biggs in New Zealand?** *Mrs Biggs* is not on any streaming or rental service in New Zealand at the moment. It is available in 3 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is Mrs Biggs, and is it suitable for children?** *Mrs Biggs* carries a UK 15 certificate for language and a few hard moments, not for anything it dwells on, and the robbery itself is brisk and mostly unseen. The real menace is a headmaster who never raises his voice at the dinner table. It is a drama about a marriage, not a thriller, and is not made for children. **How does Mrs Biggs compare to GoodFellas?** *Mrs Biggs* gives the criminal's wife the whole story, where [*GoodFellas*](https://film.one/film/goodfellas) lets Karen in only for stretches and then returns to the men. Scorsese's film is the sharper and faster piece of work and the one we would recommend to almost anyone. Pope's serial is quieter, kinder to its subject, and better suited to viewers who want the waiting at home rather than the crime. **What should I watch after Mrs Biggs?** After *Mrs Biggs*, try [*Goodfellas*](https://film.one/film/goodfellas) (1990, Fi1m 93): The gangster’s wife gets her own voice, and it is sharper than his. Then [*Appropriate Adult*](https://film.one/tv/appropriate-adult) (2011, Fi1m 84): Pope again, on an ordinary woman drawn into the orbit of a murderer. ### Reviews we read (1) - **The Guardian**, Sam Wollaston (75/100, inferred): Wollaston calls Mrs Biggs great, while noting that its main event may still be to come. He singles out the performances of Sheridan Smith, Daniel Mays and Adrian Scarborough, especially Scarborough’s portrayal of her terrifying father. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/sep/05/dallas-tv-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Jeff Pope - **Creator:** Jeff Pope - **Director:** Paul Whittington - **Writer:** Jeff Pope - **Cinematography:** Fabian Wagner - **Editor:** Mark Atkin, Ben Lester - **Music:** Bryony Marks - **Producer:** Kwadjo Dajan, Tony Wright - **Cast:** Sheridan Smith as Charmian Biggs; Daniel Mays as Ronald Biggs; Caroline Goodall as Muriel Powell; Adrian Scarborough as Bernard Powell; Tom Brooke as Mike Haynes; Oscar Sanders as Nicky Briggs (6yo); Mickey Morris as Nicky Briggs (10yo); Blake Nicholson as Twizzy Briggs (3yo) - **Runtime:** 40m - **Release (New Zealand):** 5 September 2012 - **Genres:** Drama, Crime - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFze7hAf6eU ## Where to watch in New Zealand Not streaming, renting or buying in New Zealand at the last check. Also available in: CA, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Goodfellas* (1990), Fi1m 93: The gangster’s wife gets her own voice, and it is sharper than his. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/goodfellas.md) - *Buster* (1988): The same robbery from a different kitchen, with Phil Collins and Julie Walters. - *The Great Train Robbery* (2013): Two feature-length episodes, one for the gang and one for the police. - *Appropriate Adult* (2011), Fi1m 84: Pope again, on an ordinary woman drawn into the orbit of a murderer. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/appropriate-adult.md) - *Cilla* (2014): Smith and Pope reunited, lighter in tone, with the same gift for period rooms. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/mrs-biggs