A Poet In New York

Anyone who watches won’t soon forget A Poet in New York, one of the best things on television this year.

What makes Aisling Walsh’s film must-watch, however, is Tom Hollander’s performance as the great Welsh poet.

The portrayal of Thomas’ decline is visceral from the first moments to the last, evoking that same second-hand queasiness one experiences watching, say, Leaving Las Vegas, with explicit images of obliterating drunkenness, retching, and emotionless, mechanical sex, as well as the spasmodic gasping for breath coming out of a blackout or descending into an asthma attack. Watching Thomas’ experience is riveting.

Everything else about A Poet in New York, which is timed to air alongside the centennial of Thomas’s birth, is small and underwhelming. That sounds like a damning complaint, but the limits of the script, by Andrew Davies, actually benefit Hollander’s performance to some extent.

It would be grim if it were not for the poetry itself, and Mr. Hollander’s soothing approximation of the way Thomas declaimed it on recordings he left behind.

A Poet in New York is constrained in both its ambitions and rewards. That said, viewed strictly in terms of the poetry of the words and power of Hollander’s portraiture, it’s not a bad way to commemorate, as Thomas put it, the dying of the light.