In addition to being the cockney rhyming slang for shakes, Hattie Jacques was a talented comic actress from the Carry On films. When Kenneth Williams exclaimed Ooh matron! she was the one playing the Matron. By the early 1960s, when this is set, thanks to the Carry Ons and a successful sitcom role playing Eric Sykess sister she was at the peak of her career. She was also married to the actor John Le Mesurier (which I dont think is rhyming slang for anything), who is at this point a few years off his most famous role as Sergeant Wilson in Dads Army.
This BBC 4 drama one of many to focus on the private lives of British post-war comic actors is more about the carrying on of the off screen Hattie than the on screen one. This is perhaps no bad thing as the attempts here to recreate scenes from early Carry On film Carry On Cabby arent very convincing. Beset with self esteem issues after playing so many fat woman roles opposite buxom bombshells, Hattie is all too vulnerable to temptation when attractive cockney geezer John Schofield (Aidan Turner from Being Human) shows up. She soon succumbs to the charms of the second John in her life, a widower ten years her junior. What follows could be described as Carry On Shagging.
The surprising thing is that Schofield soon takes up residence as a lodger in the Le Mesurier/Jacques family home. The even more surprising thing is that when the affair is discovered, Le Mesurier who appears to have been one of the most accommodating men to have ever lived not only lets his lodger stay but agrees to move to a room upstairs so his wife can share the room with her new lover.
To be honest, the really surprising thing is not Le Mesuriers desire to avoid scandal but the fact that despite behaving abominably throughout this (self esteem issues or not), Ruth Jones version of Jacques still comes out of this being as difficult to dislike as the real Hattie was. Although (to her credit) a lot slimmer than she was in the Gavin and Stacey days, Jones is ironically not really fat enough for the corpulent Jacques. Its a good performance though and Cold Feet/Downton Abbey star Bathhurst is especially strong too as the much put upon and perpetually sloshed Le Mesurier. There are no bonus features here at all.
Overall Verdict: A good drama even if after Michael Sheens Kenneth Williams, David Walliamss Frankie Howerd and Ken Stotts Tony Hancock, the private lives of Britains comedy legends are perhaps becoming exhausted as a subject for drama.
Reviewer: Chris Hallam