Bassey's biopic was all about sparkly dresses and swoopy songs, but very little in the way of substance
'When you look in the mirror who do you see?" Eliza Bassey asks her daughter Shirley. "Someone I don't know, I mean who's that?" says Shirley, indicating the person who looks exactly like her in the dressing-table mirror. "That's Shirley Bassey, that is," says mum, explaining the basics of what happens when photons hit a smooth reflective surface. How Stuff Works, with the Basseys? Actually Shirley (BBC2).
There have been some lovely BBC biopics recently ? on Hattie Jacques, Eric and Ernie, Kenneth Williams and others. After which this is a bit of a disappointment. No fault of Ruth Negga, who's memorable in the title role ? sultry, captivating, gorgeous, silky as silk one minute, fiery as fire the next. Convincingly Welsh too, when she's not trying to be all posh, or international. Cardiff via St John's Wood and Hollywood. A fine performance.
So it must be everyone else's fault. It's not bad, it's just not brilliant. We start off in Cardiff ? Tiger Bay and Splott (love that name, he says, metrocentrically and slightly patronisingly). I can't help thinking this is the most interesting part of the Shirley Bassey story: growing up in a big mixed-raced family in Cardiff in the 40s. We see her dad being carted off by the police, her mum having to pile everything into a pram and move house, neighbours looking on with disapproval and prejudice. Young Shirley flexes her vocal chords, in the bedroom, then in the pub, singing for chips. We meet Bo Bo, a new stepdad, who looks like he's going to become a character ... But he doesn't, because we're straight outta Splott, and up to London, barely 10 minutes in.
Obviously you can't do the whole biography in a 70-minute film. But I'm not sure the right pages have been torn out. Here's a baby suddenly, where did that come from? Race is hardly touched on, apart from when Shirley doesn't get a part in Oliver, because she's "coloured". Which seems an omission, especially as the film is supposed to be part of BBC2's Mixed Race season. The grit is swept under the carpet; it's all about the glitz. And then the whole back of the book seems to have been ripped right off; it ends so suddenly that I actually checked the schedules to see if there was another part to come.
What we're left with is the early part of Bassey's career, marriage to Kenneth Hume (who turns out to be a "pansy"), a bit of bickering with her manager, some lovely sparkly dresses and the blasting-out of a few big swoopy numbers ? Stormy [pause] wea ? [big swoop downwards] ther. Quite nice if you like that kind of thing.
Oh, there's an awful lot of staring in the dressing room mirror. "This is Shirley Bassey!" she says, looking at herself backstage somewhere. Well done, Shirley, now you're getting the hang. It's pretty basic physics actually.
Mrs Beeton! The Secret World of. That was another good fairly recent BBC biopic, with Anna Madeley playing Mrs B, breathing life into the big, fat cook book your mum probably has, with pages missing (again!) and splattered with ancient gravies. To which The Marvellous Mrs Beeton, with Sophie Dahl (BBC2) doesn't add an awful lot. Ms D is interested in the same things as were explored in the earlier film ? not just the scones and the pies but the entrepreneurial spirit, the lack of recognition, the injustice, the tragedy, the syphilis. And she gets involved, making jam with another pretty blonde woman, hosting dinner parties, but also digging about in her hero's life. She comes up with a theory about what motivated Mrs Beeton; that it was the chaos of her childhood, 20 siblings, that led her to go in pursuit of order, lists, recipes, household management. Quite plausible.
There's not an awful lot to get a grasp of visually though, we can't just stare into Sophie Dahl's enormous owly eyes for an hour. The camera is lost, doesn't know where to look. It pans down a fountain, up Nelson's column. Why? Because they're outside the National Portrait Gallery, where there's a picture of Mrs Beeton. She lived in London, so we go down to the Thames, look at boats, seagulls, St Paul's Cathedral ... Roll up, for Sophie Dahl's Original Mrs Beeton Open Top Big Red Bus Tour.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/sep/29/last-nights-tv-shirley
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