(Filmed in late 1995,...aired in Britain and American in February 1997)

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Straight to the point, no hidden meanings, read my fingers: "Breaking the Code" was the best one-off television drama I've seen this year, and last year, actually. Everyone involved deserves medals, raises, holidays in the Caribbean. Derek Jacobi turned in a sensational performance. I wasn't sure at the start, because he had a Claudius stammer....but after a couple of mo-mo-mos, 1st century Rome was forgotten. It was a perfect device for Hugh Whitemore's play, a man who has trouble talking, deciphering other people's hidden meanings, and I'm happy to eat my wor-wor-words about stage plays never working on television. The plot wove through layers and layers of meaning and nuances, the Enigma machine acting as a central metaphor for hidden truth, deceit and secrets. None of the characters was quite what you imagined, and I'd never have believed I'd be riveted by a 10-minute soliloquy on pure maths and Wittgenstein. But I was.

Sunday London Times. February 9, 1997
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Alan Turing was, in every sense, a tragic figure. Several years ago Hugh Whitemore's play "Breaking the Code' provided Derek Jacobi with an excellent vehicle for his talents. Now writer and star have come together again to offer this adaptation which is surely as compelling. Jacobi quite simply takes on the persona of Turing and makes it his own.

Christopher Robson: Plays & Players, March 1997
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Now, embellished considerably by Mr. Whitemore and still graced with Mr. Jacobi's bravura performance, "Breaking the Code" comes to television on Sunday on "Masterpiece Theater." Prepare for 90 riveting minutes. A horrifying inevitability engulfs the story, realized powerfully by the accomplished cast. Mr. Jacobi, biting his nails and using a stutter, is incredibly moving, all the more so by making Turing so utterly unapologetic about any aspect of his life. The man is eccentric but, without doubt, a genuine hero. Churchill wasn't one to be duped in that department....."Breaking the Code" is one of those exquisitely crafted productions that seem to be a monopoly of British television.

John O'Connor: New York Times, January 31, 1997
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You're not likely to find any better performances on the tube this year than the batch on display this weekend in "Breaking the Code." At the top is Sir Derek Jacobi's as Alan Turing, the defiantly independent gay, British mathematics genius who helped crack the Nazis' key communications code in World War II and thought up some of the concepts that made the digital computer possible. It's a role Jacobi knows inside out, having created it in London and on Broadway. Viewers should have no trouble following the time shifts; what may elude them, though, is the heart of this story, which has to do with real passion and the relationship between genius and freedom.

Eric Mink: New York Daily News
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The tragedy behind Turing's anonymity is revealed in "Breaking the Code," a brilliantly written and acted presentation adapted from Hugh Whitemore's play. Starring as Turing, the veteran English actor Sir Derek Jacobi gives a rich, multilayered performance that is a high point in an already illustrious career.....Jacobi is, as always, brilliantly memorable in a part that seems to fit him like a second skin. ...The production reaches beyond Turing's personal tragedy to touch upon essential enigmas of human interaction. At one point, Knox provides the story's ideal subtext in a quote from philosopher Wittgenstein: "When all scientific questions have been completely answered, the problems of life will remain completely unanswered."

Don Heckman: Los Angeles Times
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The primary asset in Sunday's presentation is Derek Jacobi as Turing, a role Jacobi played several years ago in London and New York. Anyone who remembers Jacobi's famous stutter in "I, Claudius" can witness it again here, with Jacobi inhaling great gulps of air as he tackles those troublesome consonants. His Turing also nibbles distractedly at his fingernails, and works himself into crescendos of enthusiasm marveling at nature's mathematical clarity and the prospect of a machine that solves problems. Turing is disheveled, blunt, socially awkward and utterly vulnerable.....Jacobi makes Turing quite endearing. He finds an appealing sweetness in a difficult character, and yet he's smart enough not to overindulge in it. Just as his speech impediment leaves Turing gasping for words, he seems to gasp also at the hypocrisy of a system that penalizes him for being honest about his sexuality. He muses at one point that if only he'd accepted an empty marriage of convenience with an adoring colleague, he'd have been spared his troubles with the police and the British security apparatus.....Jacobi's performance gives the production a poignancy that isn't easily shaken.

John Carmen: San Francisco Chronicle
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DEREK JACOBI IS BRILLIANT IN `BREAKING THE CODE'

Once in a great while, an actor gives a performance so incandescent that it seems likely to glow forever. If that performance is given only on the stage, though, its light ultimately may dim with the fading memories of the few who had a chance to see it.

That's why everybody should celebrate the fact that Sir Derek Jacobi's amazing performance as Alan Turing in Hugh Whitemore's play "Breaking the Code", hailed with extravagant praise by critics who saw him do the play on the London and New York stage, is now available to us all. Sunday, "Masterpiece Theatre" presents a 90-minute film adaptation of Whitemore's play in which Jacobi re-creates his highly original and unforgettable portrayal of the quirky British mathematician who helped develop the electronic computer and helped the Allies break the Nazi "Enigma" code during World War II. Those who know Jacobi best as the stuttering Emperor Claudius in the acclaimed mini-series "I, Claudius" from the early years of "Masterpiece Theatre" will find this a marvelous companion piece; once again, Jacobi effects a nervous stammer that's a key component of Turing's peculiar personality.

Turing's story represents a sad passage in British history because the man who helped win the war and preserve England's freedom from fascist tyranny was tormented and destroyed by his own government in the postwar years when he ran afoul of England's then-strict and unforgiving laws against homosexuality. Jacobi gets exceptional support from the fine cast, including playwright Harold Pinter as John Smith, the Ministry of Security operative who orders Turing to control his sex life after the war, and Julian Kerridge as Ron Miller, the working-class lover whose disloyalty to Turing sets up his arrest for "gross indecency" in 1952.

But it's Jacobi's deeply persuasive performance that makes all the difference. He creates such a simple and likable Turing that his downfall, with the man crucified by bureaucrats of an ungrateful nation, achieves the stature of profound tragedy.

Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1997

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Any excuse to get real, intelligent, fire-bucket drama onto BBC1 is good. Whitemore's play is an elegant piece, with a virtuoso role for Jacobi, in which the contradictions of Turing---his frankness and his enforced secrecy---finally refuse to be contained in his genius. After the war (which wouldn't have been won without him, as he told a lover quite matter-of-fact), Turing was prosecuted for his homosexuality, hence his suicide. His code, if you like, was broken. Evidently the virtue of mathematics is that it always tells the truth. Thus, all the great moments in "Breaking the Code" involved the perils of veracity. Turing's would-be girlfriend Pat (Amanda Root) tells him she loves him. Big moment. "I'm a homosexual." he says, quietly. Another big moment. "I know," she replies. A terrific scene with Turing's mother (Prunella Scales) involves the same confession. But most crucial of all is his reckless admission to a police officer (Alun Armstrong) that he's slept with a man. This is 1952. "Can't you forget about it?" he keeps asking the stone-faced Armstrong. "Can't you?"

A genius pleading with a jobsworth is an unpleasant sight. Jacobi's upturned face is the perfect mixture of mask and passion. As an actor, he can personify abject loss and loneliness better than anyone I know; years ago, his Cyrano de Bergerac made me actually sob in the stalls. To see his Alan Turing on telly, at last, was a real treat.

Linda Truss The London Times: February 6, 1997