Cold Comfort Farm Have Always Been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm", set several years later and based on "Conference at Cold Comfort Farm", when Flora is married with several children, was broadcast. In 1995 a television film was produced which was generally well-received, with critics. Janet Maslin in the "New York Times" wrote that this screen version "gets it exactly right". The film starred Kate Beckinsale as Flora, Joanna Lumley as her friend and mentor Mary Smiling, Rufus Sewell as Seth, Ian McKellen as Amos Starkadder, Eileen Atkins as Judith, Stephen Fry as Mybug, Miriam Margolyes as Mrs. Beetle, and Angela Thorne as
Kate Beckinsale criminal who gets forced back into a life of crime after his family members are threatened. The film was directed by Baltasar Kormákur, who also starred in the Icelandic language version of the film, "Reykjavík-Rotterdam". The "San Francisco Chronicle" felt Beckinsale was "stuck in a bit of a thankless role as the victimised wife, but she does try to infuse a harder edge to the character." "The Hollywood Reporter" stated that "Beckinsale, her innate classiness calibrated down a few notches, has little to do but be supportive, worried and, eventually, besieged." "Entertainment Weekly" felt that the "woman-in-peril stuff is second-rate,