In October and November 1997, Channel 4 presented the novel sequence in four television films, with a screenplay by Hugh Whitemore, produced by Peter Amsorge. Widmerpool was played by Simon Russell Beale; in a generally critical review of the first film of the series, Thomas Sutcliffe in "The Independent" refers to Beale's performance as particularly good, bearing in mind the "thin ledges of characterisation" the script provides to the cast. The journalist David Aaronovitch thought Beale's interpretation of the character definitive: "...the Widmerpool who insinuated his podgy bulk into my private space was ... Simon Russell Beale's Widmerpool, who has come to stay". Reviewing the reissue of the films in DVD in 2012, Stuart Jeffries in "The Guardian" describes Widmerpool as "one of fiction's most intriguing monsters" and likens Beale's portrayal to that of "a kind of grown-up Billy Bunter with the charm sucked out". Christopher Hitchens, writing in the "New York Review of Books", criticised the production (though not Beale's performance), for depicting Widmerpool as "a hapless rather than a hateful figure".