they went to bed. Such conditions can magnify the power of the pieces, adding to their creepiness and helping the tales imbed themselves within impressionable minds. Sarah Dempster, writing in The Guardian in 2005, noted that "Perhaps the most surprising aspect ... is how little its adaptations ... have dated. They may boast the odd signifier of cheap 1970s telly – outlandish regional vowels, inappropriate eyeliner, a surfeit of depressed oboes – but lurking within their hushed cloisters and glum expanses of deserted coastline is a timelessness at odds with virtually everything written, or broadcast, before or since." The production values have received particular praise. Helen Wheatley writes that "the series was shot on film on location, with much attention paid to the minutiae of period detail; ... it might be seen to visually prefigure the filmic stylishness and traditions of later literary adaptations such as Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown." However, she notes that, unlike those adaptations, the sinister tone of the period pieces could lend itself the label of a "feel bad" heritage television drama. The Signalman is perhaps the most critically acclaimed. Simon Farquhar suggests that the film is the first evidence of Andrew Davies's gift as an adaptor of literary fiction: "despite an extremely arduous shoot, Davies and Clarke's fog-wreathed, flame-crackling masterpiece manages something the production team could never have imagined: it's better than the book." Dave Rolinson notes that, while "the adaptation inevitably misses Dickens's nuanced and often unsettling prose, ... it achieves comparably skilful effects through visual language and sound, heightening theme and supernatural mood. ... The production heightens the story's crucial features of repetition and foreshadowing." Sergio Angelini writes about A Warning to the Curious: "Of Clark's many adaptations of James's stories, this is perhaps the most varied in its use of landscape and the most visually arresting in its attempt to create an otherworldly atmosphere. ... Using long lenses to flatten the scenery and make the ghost indistinct in the background, John McGlashan's fine cinematography brilliantly conveys the ageless, ritualistic determinism of Ager's pursuit and signposts the inevitability of Paxton's demise." Angelini is less appreciative of The Ash Tree, noting that the literal adaptation of the story's ending loses the atmosphere of earlier instalments: "While the creatures are certainly grotesque and threatening, compared with some of the other adaptations of the series, The Ash Tree does lose some power