--- title: "Room at the Top" year: 2012 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/room-at-the-top-2012" fi1m_id: "room-at-the-top-2012" imdb_id: "tt1560591" tmdb_id: 48652 wikidata_id: "Q7366275" fi1m_score: 78 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-10-07T16:10:32.033759+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T16:10:32.548221+00:00" region: "ID" 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." --- # Room at the Top (2012) Created by Aisling Walsh · 1h 00m · Drama ## Identity Room at the Top - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/room-at-the-top-2012 - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** room-at-the-top-2012 - **IMDb ID:** tt1560591 - **TMDB ID:** 48652 - **Wikidata ID:** Q7366275 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1560591/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/48652, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7366275 **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Post-war Yorkshire, a borrowed suit, a rich man’s daughter, and Maxine Peake making the whole thing hurt > Amanda Coe and Aisling Walsh’s two-part version of John Braine’s novel is handsome, sharp and better acted than it needed to be. Matthew McNulty makes Joe Lampton easy to like and hard to forgive, and Maxine Peake walks off with it. ## Synopsis The Yorkshire town of Warley, in the years just after the war. Joe Lampton (Matthew McNulty), a young accountant from the wrong side of the valley, arrives to take a job in the municipal treasurer’s office and decides, looking up at the big houses on the hill, that he is going to live in one. His friend Charles (Tom Brooke) watches him do it. Joe joins the amateur dramatic society run by Bob and Eva Storr (Paul Hilton and Zoe Telford) and meets two women there: Susan Brown (Jenna Coleman), the daughter of the richest man in town, already spoken for by Jack Wales (Theo James); and Alice Aisgill (Maxine Peake), older, married to George (Daniel Flynn) and not at all happy about it. Joe wants Susan, or wants what comes with her. He keeps going back to Alice. ## Review John Braine’s novel is about a young man who looks at a town and sees a price list. Joe Lampton wants the house on the hill, the car, the girl whose father owns the mill, and he is honest with himself about wanting them, which is more than most of the people around him can manage. Amanda Coe’s adaptation, in two hour-long parts directed by Aisling Walsh, keeps that honesty and keeps the book’s cruelty too. It is a good piece of television, and in Maxine Peake it has something better than good. Our verdict is straightforward. If you like British period drama about class and money and want one that does not flatter anyone, this is worth your two hours. It is not a masterwork and it does not pretend to be one; it is a careful, well-made telling of a story that has been told before, and it earns its place beside the earlier telling without replacing it. Matthew McNulty plays Joe as a man who knows exactly how he looks in a room and is still not sure it is enough. He has the charm and the chip on the shoulder in equal measure, and he lets you see Joe doing the sums on every person he meets. What makes the performance work is that McNulty does not ask for sympathy. Joe is a user. The series lets him be one and trusts you to keep watching anyway. Jenna Coleman’s Susan Brown is the harder part, because Susan is written as a prize rather than a person, and Coleman plays that: a bright, sheltered girl who has never been told no and does not know what to do with a man who says yes to everything. Theo James has little to do as Jack Wales beyond be tall and rich, and does it. Tom Brooke, as Charles, is the series’ conscience and its best source of jokes, and he is underused in the second part. Then there is Peake. Alice Aisgill is the married woman Joe sleeps with while he courts the girl he means to marry, and in lesser hands she is a plot complication. Peake plays her as the only adult in the story. She is funny, tired, clear-eyed about Joe and clear-eyed about herself, and she looks at him the way you look at a door you know you should not open. It moved us more than we expected. The scene that did it is a small one in the first part: Alice, alone with Joe after a rehearsal, saying something light and watching his face to see whether he has understood her. He has not, quite. We had, and we wanted to warn her. Lukas Strebel shoots the town in browns and greys, with the lamps left low in the lodging houses and the light saved for the Browns’ big rooms, so that money looks warm and everything else looks like weather. Chris Truelove’s production design gets the texture of the time right without making a museum of it: the thin carpets, the rented suits, the one good coat. Kristina Hetherington’s editing keeps the two parts moving at a steady walk. The second part takes a turn we will not describe, and Hetherington lets it land without rushing. It has limits. Two hours is not quite enough for Braine’s book, and the second part feels it: Joe’s choices come faster than his reasons, and a strand with Beryl (Kate O’Flynn) is set up and then more or less dropped. Coe’s script is good on what people say and less good on what the town thinks of them, so the class pressure that drives Joe is more often stated than shown. And the series never finds a way to make Susan matter to us as much as she matters to Joe, which leaves the central choice lopsided. Braine’s novel was filmed before, in 1959, with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret, and that version is the one people remember. This one is smaller, kinder to Joe and rougher on the people he climbs over. The one review we have read goes further than we do, and we understand why; Peake would make a case for anything. See it for her, and for McNulty, and do not expect to like Joe at the end of it. He would not expect you to. *Fi1m score 78, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Room at the Top worth watching?** *Room at the Top* is worth watching for anyone who likes British period drama about class and money and wants one that flatters nobody, and we scored it 78. Matthew McNulty makes Joe Lampton easy to like and hard to forgive, and Maxine Peake, as the married woman he keeps going back to, is the reason to see it. The second part moves faster than its reasons allow. **How long is Room at the Top, and what is it rated?** *Room at the Top* has episodes of about 1h 00m. It is a drama series. **Where can I watch Room at the Top in Indonesia?** *Room at the Top* is not on any streaming or rental service in Indonesia at the moment. It is available in 1 other country; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does Room at the Top compare to Room at the Top?** *Room at the Top* (2012) is smaller, kinder to Joe Lampton and rougher on the people he climbs over than the earlier film with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret, which remains the one to beat. The television version is the better acted of the two, with Maxine Peake's Alice matching Signoret's; the film is the colder and harder telling. Start with the film if you want the sharper version, and with the series if you want two hours of it. **Is Room at the Top based on a true story or a book?** *Room at the Top* is based on John Braine's novel of the same name, about a young accountant in post-war Yorkshire who decides to marry his way up the hill. Amanda Coe's two-part adaptation keeps the book's honesty and its cruelty, though two hours is not quite enough for it and the second part feels the squeeze. You do not need to have read the novel to follow it. **What should I watch after Room at the Top?** After *Room at the Top*, try [*Room at the Top*](https://film.one/film/room-at-the-top) (1959, Fi1m 82): The earlier telling, with Simone Signoret; colder, harder and still the one to beat. Then [*A Place in the Sun*](https://film.one/film/a-place-in-the-sun) (1951, Fi1m 81): An American climber, a rich girl and a poor one; the same arithmetic, worse weather; and [*Saturday Night and Sunday Morning*](https://film.one/film/saturday-night-and-sunday-morning) (1960, Fi1m 82): Albert Finney’s factory hand wants less than Joe and gets it with more swagger. ### Reviews we read (1) - **The Guardian**, Euan Ferguson (90/100, inferred): Ferguson finds the adaptation deeply affecting and emotionally powerful. He especially praises Maxine Peake’s performance and Matthew McNulty’s vulnerable portrayal of Joe. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/sep/30/room-top-paradise-marr-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Aisling Walsh - **Director:** Aisling Walsh - **Writer:** Amanda Coe - **Novel:** John Braine - **Cinematography:** Lukas Strebel - **Editor:** Kristina Hetherington - **Production design:** Chris Truelove - **Producer:** Paul Frift - **Cast:** Matthew McNulty as Joe Lampton; Tom Brooke as Charles; Jenna Coleman as Susan Brown; Maxine Peake as Alice Aisgill; Kate O'Flynn as Beryl; Paul Hilton as Bob Storr; Eithne Browne as Esther; Zoe Telford as Eva Storr - **Runtime:** 1h 00m - **Release (Indonesia):** 26 September 2012 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in Indonesia Not streaming, renting or buying in Indonesia at the last check. Also available in: AU. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Room at the Top* (1959), Fi1m 82: The earlier telling, with Simone Signoret; colder, harder and still the one to beat. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/room-at-the-top.md) - *A Place in the Sun* (1951), Fi1m 81: An American climber, a rich girl and a poor one; the same arithmetic, worse weather. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-place-in-the-sun.md) - *Saturday Night and Sunday Morning* (1960), Fi1m 82: Albert Finney’s factory hand wants less than Joe and gets it with more swagger. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/saturday-night-and-sunday-morning.md) - *Purple Noon* (1960), Fi1m 82: A poor young man steals a rich one’s life on the Mediterranean; sunlit and ruthless. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/purple-noon.md) - *Our Friends in the North* (1996), Fi1m 88: Four Newcastle friends and thirty years of wanting more; British television at its most patient. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/our-friends-in-the-north.md) --- © 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/room-at-the-top-2012