shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2014-09-20 08:06 am
shallowness) wrote2014-09-20 08:06 am
Hark, a redhead!
I'm on a bit of an ITV kick at the moment, for me. (Downton's back.)
Cilla 1/3
Could this be any more of an ITV biopic? It stars Sheridan Smith, who is almost a regular for them by now (not that she isn’t multi-talented) playing Cilla, who presented so many shows on the channel. Plus it’s set in Liverpool in the 1960s, so they can indulge in the period detail (the sectarianism is hammered home repeatedly, as Catholic Cilla knows her father wouldn’t approve of her going out with a Protestant boy and vice-versa for Bobby and his Protestant father). Oh, and she hung out with the Beatles (inevitably, John Lennon gets the best lines) and was plucked from the crowd to sing at the Cavern Club.
Basically it’s ordinary girl + big voice wants to make it big as a singer territory, except the girl would be become a beloved star. So the audience knows she’ll get there, but the pleasure is in the journey. While I thought Smith was almost least Cilla-like when performing, there is the thrill of hearing this big, brassy voice with a bit of soul come out. (They could boast that all the singing was recorded live on set.) Also, of course, she caught the eye of a young man who was a bit of a fibber, but taken by her (more so than she by him, at this point, but she’s very much at the just out of school, drinking milkshakes stage). He would go on to become her husband. Aneurin Barnard looks terrible with dyed blond hair, it just doesn’t go with his face, his build seems wrong for the era, but he does lovelorn really well (and the one scene of him singing made me want someone to find him a role as a singer in a biopic then).
It’s not mining great depths, many of its pleasures are simple, like watching the Merseybeat scene at a stage when it’s still a lot about kids enjoying themselves dancing and singing, hoping to get out of their dreary humdrum lives. They’re dragging it out into three parts – Cilla has just done a terrible auditon for Brian Epstein, oh noes, with nerves getting the better of her for the first time on stage.
It is amusing to see the Beatles play supporting players. And hey, among all their achievements, they never presented Blind Date, did they!?
Cilla 1/3
Could this be any more of an ITV biopic? It stars Sheridan Smith, who is almost a regular for them by now (not that she isn’t multi-talented) playing Cilla, who presented so many shows on the channel. Plus it’s set in Liverpool in the 1960s, so they can indulge in the period detail (the sectarianism is hammered home repeatedly, as Catholic Cilla knows her father wouldn’t approve of her going out with a Protestant boy and vice-versa for Bobby and his Protestant father). Oh, and she hung out with the Beatles (inevitably, John Lennon gets the best lines) and was plucked from the crowd to sing at the Cavern Club.
Basically it’s ordinary girl + big voice wants to make it big as a singer territory, except the girl would be become a beloved star. So the audience knows she’ll get there, but the pleasure is in the journey. While I thought Smith was almost least Cilla-like when performing, there is the thrill of hearing this big, brassy voice with a bit of soul come out. (They could boast that all the singing was recorded live on set.) Also, of course, she caught the eye of a young man who was a bit of a fibber, but taken by her (more so than she by him, at this point, but she’s very much at the just out of school, drinking milkshakes stage). He would go on to become her husband. Aneurin Barnard looks terrible with dyed blond hair, it just doesn’t go with his face, his build seems wrong for the era, but he does lovelorn really well (and the one scene of him singing made me want someone to find him a role as a singer in a biopic then).
It’s not mining great depths, many of its pleasures are simple, like watching the Merseybeat scene at a stage when it’s still a lot about kids enjoying themselves dancing and singing, hoping to get out of their dreary humdrum lives. They’re dragging it out into three parts – Cilla has just done a terrible auditon for Brian Epstein, oh noes, with nerves getting the better of her for the first time on stage.
It is amusing to see the Beatles play supporting players. And hey, among all their achievements, they never presented Blind Date, did they!?