We'll Take Manhattan

David who?  Jean who?  For anyone who draws a blank whenever the Sixties are mentioned, Swinging or otherwise, this features a few introductory lines.  Apparently, the NYC shoot of the Shrimp by Bailey in 1962 began youth culture and broke down class barriers.  Err... really?  What about young Harry Webb crooning about being a Young One in 1959?  As far as we know, he wasn't titled at the time.

Well, we can forgive them overstating the case, since without some trumpeting you might wonder what material there was to fill a 90-minute drama.  You might wonder that anyway.  A piece featuring icons is always hamstrung by the obvious, namely the familiar features being unfamiliarly rendered by actors who are often known for other roles.  Thus Amy Pond - oops! - Karen Gillan, imitates the luminous Jean Shrimpton by staring a lot and wearing her headscarves well.  Nice legs, as they say, shame about the face, which though pretty, is not similar to Ms Shrimpton's.  Aneurin Barnard as Bailey sports a full-on, cheeky-chappy oik persona.  Maybe the real Bailey was/is such a character (he and Jean Shrimpton are said to have been consulted), but he comes across here as a young Arthur Daley.

The best performance, and probably the most thankless role, has Helen McCrory as Lady Rendlesham.  According to this, she's so conservative and stuck in the past, it's a wonder she's managed to keep Vogue going at all.  We get no sense of why, in a rapidly-changing world, something like fashion, which would typically drive such change, would be so against trying something new.

Biopics can work, a recent example being the Morecambe and Wise one, 'Eric and Ernie', but it had a good script by Victoria Wood and fine performances, particularly from a little-known Daniel Rigby.  BBC4 has hit on a formula for dramatizing 20th Century people and events, but with something so visual as its subject, Barnard's Mockney, Gillan's bland, rather vacant good looks and a clumsily on-the-nose script distract fatally from the sheer ebullience and style of the original Bailey and Shrimpton collaboration.  For once, all the interesting stuff was going on in front of the camera (the romance being of most interest to the couple themselves) and so the best way of appreciating the shots and their impact is just to look.

Jean Shrimpton in New York, 1962, by David Bailey

*Happy to donate for this shot.  Dolls' Hospital, Shelter or Save the Children.