User Reviews

The end of the BBC's long-running "Play for Today" series in 1984 did not mark the end of its commitment to one-off dramas. "Play for Today" was replaced by "Screen One" and "Screen Two", intended (as the names suggest) to compete with the rival Channel Four's "Film Four" series. Whereas most of the "Plays for Today" had been shot in a studio and averaged between 60 and 90 minutes in length, "Screen One" and "Screen Two" dramas- the name varied according to whether they were shown on BBC1 or BBC2- were, like their "Film Four" equivalents, television films rather than television plays, making greater use of location shooting and longer, of a comparable length to feature films.

"Hancock", a Screen One production from 1991, is a biopic of the English comedian and actor Tony Hancock (1924 -1968), and concentrates on the last few years of his life, when his career was in decline. Between 1954 and 1961, when he was the star of the highly popular BBC series "Hancock's Half Hour", broadcast first on the radio and then on television, he was one of the best known and best loved entertainers in Britain. This series came to an end in 1961, and he never found anything to replace it. He starred in two British films, but neither was a great success, and his attempt to break into Hollywood ended in failure when he was sacked from his role in "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin". He moved to work in Australia but, disillusioned with the way his career was going, committed suicide in Sydney in June 1968.

The film portrays Hancock as an essentially self-destructive figure. His two main problems were alcoholism and a tendency to fall out with those around him, even if they had played an important part in his success. He broke with his comedy partner Sid James (later to find fame in the "Carry On" films) who had co-starred in the earlier episodes of "Hancock's Half Hour" and who had previously regarded him as a personal friend. In career terms Hancock survived this rupture, as some of the episodes he made after James's departure (such as "The Blood Donor") are regarded as comedy classics, but the real setback came when he broke with his scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, a breach which brought "Hancock's Half Hour" to an end.

According to the film, the cause of the breach was Hancock's dissatisfaction with the sort of comedy he was producing, which he saw as too characteristically British and too provincial, revolving as it did around a character who lived at "23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam". (The character was tellingly a struggling comedian and actor named Anthony Hancock). He had ambitions to produce what he described as "universal comedy" which would have more international appeal, but he never seemed able to work out what this "universal comedy" would look like. His heavy drinking and quarrelsome nature also affected his personal relationships; both his marriages ended in divorce.

I am too young to remember Hancock in his prime, and he has never been a figure in whom I have taken a great interest, although I have occasionally seen some of the surviving episodes of "Hancock's Half Hour" when they have been repeated on television. (Many were destroyed under the BBC's short-sighted policy of "wiping" the tapes of old TV programmes). I was therefore surprised by how strongly affected I was by this film when I recently saw it for the first time. (I evidently missed it in 1991).

The strength of the film is largely down to the powerful central performance from Alfred Molina, who brings out both sides of Hancock's personality. On the one hand, he must have been absolutely exasperating, difficult either to work with or to live with. On the other, we realise that, if not quite the genius he believed himself to be, he was a man of great talent whose tragedy was that, after a period of success, his talent was largely wasted. Molina seems to have a gift for portraying real-life individuals; the other two films in which he greatly impressed me were "Prick up Your Ears!" in which he played Joe Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell and "Frida" in which he played the Mexican painter Diego Rivera.

Not all the contributions were in the same class; Malcolm Sinclair never seemed convincing, in looks, voice or manner, as Hancock's close friend the actor John le Mesurier (Sergeant Wilson from "Dad's Army"). Overall, however, I found this a powerful and affecting drama. 8/10