Surprise, Surprise! Sheridan Smith continues her single-handed take-over of feisty working-class females in TV biopics. Here she is as Priscilla White, better known to the public as Cilla Black, in this three-parter on ITV. Classy cast all round with Ed Stoppard as manager Brian Epstein - who also managed that little-known moptop foursome The Beatles - and Aneurin Barnard as the love of her life Bobby Willis. (Quite why they cast a raven-haired actor to play blonde Bobby is beyond us. Maybe Mr. Barnard has a thing for strange hairstyles after his Richard III portrayal. 'Tis a relief that Edward Scissorhands is already made.)
Anyway, Jeff Pope's screenplay is solid enough and while the scally-speak is sometimes hard to fathom (is this because we're not au fait with Scouse or because the actors are heading hither and yon from Liverpool? We can't comment.) it has all the scenes you'd expect. Sheridan Smith acts her socks off again, and with that and some belting rock'n'roll numbers, it's a lorra lorra fun (sorry Cill).
We approached Tommy Cooper with a feeling of dread. It seems to be both a star vehicle for, and a pet project of, David Threlfall (in a false nose), and at two hours on a Bank Holiday Monday a bit of a vanity project.
As it turns out it was far better than it had a right to be. Tommy Cooper's story isn't that well known - arguably he isn't that well known himself these days - and the story we were given of a love triangle over 15 years, tolerated by both the mistress, Cooper's wife, and the mistress's husband was very good. In this respect it was a bit like the BBC's Hattie from 2008, where Hattie herself was in the love triangle, and her husband John Le Mesurier had to put up with it.
As with Hattie, and all of the other films of this type (The Curse of Steptoe, Eric & Ernie) one major pitfall is how bad the performances of the supporting cast as other dead celebrities are, and how crass it is when they're introduced, given that the actors are rarely spitting images of who they're playing. Tommy Cooper managed to avoid this by and large, with good performances by Bob Golding as Eric Morecambe, and Paul Ritter as Eric Sykes, and even Jordan Metcalfe as Les Dennis, but there were a couple of dodgy bits when they were introduced:
Cooper walks into a bar: "Hello Eric, Hello Eric!"
Barman: "Alright Tommy. What are you having, Mr Morecambe? Mr Sykes?"
Overall though, the script by Simon Nye was very good, matched by the performances of Threlfall, Amanda Redman as his wife, Helen McCrory as the mistress, and Gregor Fisher as his agent. So good in fact that it made you understand why they would put up with a miserly alcoholic who was always late.
The problem with dramas like this is that you always wonder if they'd have been better off filling the schedules with a documentary instead - I doubt a drama about Mel Smith could be as good as the tribute to him shown over Christmas for example - but in this case the acting and the writing dragged it through.
