TV Review: TOMMY COOPER: NOT LIKE THAT, LIKE THIS

This article was originally published in The Courier on Saturday 26th August 2014.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This: Monday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

In the unlikely event that I should ever appear on Mastermind, I suspect my specialist subject would be 'TV Biopics About Dead Comedians'. That's hardly the most impressive claim, but you work with what you have.

BBC Four has famously mined this seam for all it's worth in the last few years, more often than not with dubious results. For every incisive drama about the likes of Kenny Everett and Kenneth Williams – famous, funny Kens have been served well - they've produced half a dozen hackneyed biopics seemingly hell-bent on reducing the subject in question to the laziest set of tears-of-a-clown clichés. I've seen 'em all, and admired very few.

So I wasn't expecting much from Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This. He may be one of our most beloved comics, but the grisly details of his personal life – alcoholism, infidelity, domestic violence – suggested that this would be just another tawdry wallow in showbiz misery. How wrong I was. What I hadn't banked on – and this was foolish in retrospect – was that this prestigious production was written by Simon Nye, a seasoned comedy writer whose respect for the Gods of his craft couldn't be more obvious.

Unlike most dramas of its kind, this one actually went out of its way to remind us that the tragic Pagliacci in question was a very funny person. The re-staging of classic comedy routines almost always fall painfully flat in biopics, but in the careful hands of Nye and David Threfall – who delivered an uncanny performance as Cooper, rubbery latex face and all – they really came alive. It was an affectionate tribute to the craft and toil of mirth-making itself; very few dramas in my experience have explored the idea of comedy as a serious business with such scrutiny and understanding.

Cooper came across as an artist who knew exactly what he was doing at all times. Like all performers, he could be anxious, self-involved and demanding. But you have to admire the amount of effort he devoted to looking like an inept, befuddled fool on stage. The irony, of course, is that in private he was a mess. 

All of the care and attention he lavished on his studiously ramshackle act was absent from his dealings with the women in his life. But Nye and Threfall, both of whom have clearly studied Cooper in some detail, understood that behind his maddening frailties, this was ultimately a lovable man. He was obsessed with comedy, but ill-suited to reality.

The way he treated his wife and mistress – both portrayed with dignity by, respectively, Amanda Redman and Helen McCrory – was unforgivable. Without going into graphic detail, Nye didn't shy away from the fact that Cooper could be physically abusive when drunk. But he never came across as a monster. Rather, he was a lost and rather hopeless alcoholic who craved adoration on his own unreasonable terms. 

I didn't think any less of Cooper after watching this sensitive, witty, nuanced drama. On the contrary, I came away from it with a renewed respect for his genius, and a sort of weary, hesitant sympathy for him as a tortured human being.

Everyone involved should be applauded for creating that rare beast: an angst-ridden biopic about a comedian that succeeded in celebrating his art while seeking to understand his personal demons. Without question, it was one of the best dramas of it's kind I've ever seen. 

Russell Crowe's Bill Hicks Biopic

This blog was first published in The Scotsman on 25th July 2012.

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/film/who-can-bring-bill-hicks-to-life-on-screen-1-2431147

The news this week that actor Russell Crowe is to direct a biopic of the late American stand-up comedian, Bill Hicks, triggered within me the Pavlovian response that always greets such news: whatever the film's potential merits, it's highly likely that the scenes depicting the comedian performing his material will fall embarrassingly flat.

That's not because Hicks wasn't funny – far from it, at his best he was hilarious – but because few dramatic actors are capable of accurately capturing the unique timing and delivery of the comic persona they happen to be inhabiting.

Take, for instance, Dustin Hoffman in Bob Fosse's Lenny, who, despite skilfully mimicking the cadences of Lenny Bruce's speech patterns, singularly failed to emulate the soul of his material. That, after all, is a tough call for any actor, even one as deft as Hoffman, which is presumably why there have been relatively few big screen biopics of comedians over the years, certainly when compared to the amount that have been made about musicians.

It's easier to recapture the spirit of a great musician on film, if only because lip-syncing to original recordings at least allows an actor to hide behind – and crudely celebrate - the actual art of the person they're portraying. But without the safety net of miming, an actor playing a comedian needs to somehow channel their comic essence using dramatically trained bones. I don't envy them.

This is why musical tribute acts are ten-a-penny, and why comedy tribute acts are almost unheard of. You can close your eyes and fleetingly believe in the former, but if the latter deviates even slightly from the familiar, nuanced delivery of the original artist, then it sounds like a woefully off-key cover version. Where the best comedians are concerned, their material is so much a part of their own personal outlook, it sounds awkward and false when emanating from anybody else.

That's presumably why the only truly successful example, at least as far as I'm concerned, is Jim Carrey's performance as situationist genius Andy Kaufman in Milos Forman's Man On The Moon. Carrey actually knows what it's like to perform comedy on stage, and that background must surely have informed his ability to recreate Kaufman's idiosyncratic routines and, crucially, make them funny.

So if Crowe has any sense – and interviews demonstrate that he at least has a sense of humour - then his best bet is to cast an actor, possibly an unknown, who has a strong understanding of the dynamics of stand-up comedy. Or Michael McIntyre, if he's available.