Jarrold directed
Great Expectations, starring
Ioan Gruffudd, in 1999.
The Boston Globe felt that Jarrold helped distinguish it from the many other adaptations by "keeping the reins in on his characters, emotionally and morally. They are unromanticized and low-key performances that only rarely spill over into the maudlin and righteous." In 2006, Jarrold directed
Kinky Boots which has proven hugely popular with audiences in its numerous showing on TV. The
Chicago Tribune called the film "quite enjoyable, effortlessly well-done on every level, even moving at times, but relatively lightweight." In 2007,
Becoming Jane was released.
The Washington Times stated that Jarrold's direction "has made a witty, beautiful film. His technical achievement is no small matter, with nice, long tracking shots and clever focus tricks." The following year, Jarrold directed the first film adaptation of
Evelyn Waugh's iconic story
Brideshead Revisited, "one of the great English novels which has never been filmed," according to producer
Kevin Loader. It starred
Hayley Atwell,
Matthew Goode,
Emma Thompson, and
Michael Gambon. About the novel's status as an unchangeable classic, Jarrold stated that "there are people who are obsessive and obviously that's going to be daunting when they come and judge us. I've had a few people who have said, 'Why are you doing it?' But I think there is a generation who know nothing about
Brideshead Revisited, who haven't read the book or who are only dimly aware of the
TV series because it's been repeated on ITV4 or something."
The Daily Telegraph felt that Jarrold's "scenes are filled with grand period detail – huge Rolls-Royces, ice sculptures, vast fireplaces of sculptured marble – but he stops it from becoming an overblown, glossy spectacle by making the world around the characters feel like a dream."
Mandalay Vision hired Jarrold to direct the serial killer film
Exit 147, with a script written by Travis Milloy. Producer
Cathy Schulman and
Matthew Rhodes produced the film for Mandalay. In February 2013,
Taylor Kitsch joined the film to play lead as a sadistic sheriff. Then Jarrold directed
A Royal Night Out for
Ecosse Films, a movie released in May 2015. His Emmy-nominated
Red Riding 1974 was highly acclaimed with
Andrew Garfield,
Sean Bean, and
Rebecca Hall giving great performances.
Film Noir at its best according to the critics: the trilogy affords a fairly familiar immersion in contemporary British cinematic miserablism, where men and terror run wild, and beauty exists only in the cinematography and some of the performances. All else is horror. Certainly, that’s true in the trilogy, which, starting with
Red Riding 1974, leaps into the void when a young Yorkshire journalist, "Eddie Dunford" (Andrew Garfield, not up to the leading-man task), realizes that the murder of a girl might be connected to a few earlier deaths, an insight that finds him first chasing after clues and then being chased in turn. Jarrold shot the film in
Super 16 millimeter, which gives the images atmospheric grit and swirling grain that, with the almost comically ubiquitous cigarette smoke, nicely thickens the air (
The New York Times). In 2023 Jarrold's
The Good Mothers won the best series at the
Berlin International Festival. Jarrold served as a
judge at the
Norwich Film Festival in 2016, being appointed its
patron in 2017. ==Filmography as director==