Hancock & Joan

Tony Hancock became one of the key British comedians of the 50s and 60s due to his work on HANCOCK'S HALF HOUR and THE TONY HANCOCK SHOW. Hancock's style is deadpan and miserabilist, and often very funny. He has a hangdog Bilko-like expression, but with none of Bilko's cock-eyed confidence. When Bilko fails, he will try the same lousy idea (changed slightly) the next episode. Hancock is arrogant on the surface but is ultimately a coward who takes all the problems to heart... as if the world is conspiring against him.

In real life, Hancock wasn't far removed from his character. Once the HANCOCK shows ended (mostly due his selfish removal of his double-act partner Sid James, and his growing disgust for the writers), he felt he could make it on his own. But he didn't - or couldn't - and ended up doing three shows in Australia before committing suicide in 1968, with a bottle of vodka and a bunch of amphetamines.

This is just the sort of story that Hollywood would pick up. There's MAN ON THE MOON and RAY and many more biopics about self-destructive outsiders. But Hancock was never big in America, so it was left for the BBC to do the job in a drama-documentary called HANCOCK AND JOAN.

Despite the prestige the BBC has abroad (mostly for its news programmes and natural history documentaries) it has a pretty awful record for TV dramas. Soap operas are the prime-time focus in the UK, but the need to quickly pump out episodes leads to terrible stuff. BBC's higher budget productions are turgid historical dramas which rely mostly on period costumes to try and hide some horribly stagy acting. Dramas set in modern times end up as a shouty low-rent version of Hollywood films and - increasingly - US TV.

All this made HANCOCK AND JOAN a pleasant surprise. There's a little shouting in the film, and only at moments when people are angry. It's not shot with much flair, but there's a few moments that raise above usual TV movies. I liked the little introduction of fantasy when Hancock sees a vision of himself as he commits suicide. The shots inside the drunk-tank are also pretty innovative. HANCOCK AND JOAN - of course - has the annoying washed-out colours emblematic of the British style. But the film has enough other things going for it, you can mostly forgive its bland look.

HANCOCK AND JOAN was part of a series of BBC drama-docs about British comedians who led messed-up lives. One - FANTABULOSA - is one of the most unintentionally funny things you will see... with Michael Sheen over-acting (as he did in FROST VS NIXON, THE QUEEN and everything else) as Kenneth Williams, star of the CARRY ON movies.

But HANCOCK AND JOAN is acted - and written - with real skill. Hancock is hateful at times, but also funny and charismatic. It actually makes sense that Joan (the wife of DAD'S ARMY star John Le Mesurier) would fall in love with him... and that's rare in this sort of thing. I loved the moment where she's screwing Hancock and his mother knocks on the door. "I'm coming!" he shouts. Joan giggles... and so does his mother when he lets her into the room. There's a real tenderness between the characters, based on jokiness and honesty.

The moments of madness - including Hancock drunkenly tearing the place apart during a dinner with Joan's parents - are effectively shocking. Joan is an interesting character, vulnerable yet ballsy. She becomes very likable, and her sink into alcohol abuse to try and keep up with Hancock feels credible. The only duff performance is Alex Jennings as John Le Mesurier, which is very self-aware and parodic of the real life man.

Anyway, this is a once in a decade, complete recommendation of a British TV drama. HANCOCK AND JOAN is well worth checking out, and streets ahead of celebrated British "realist" films like CONTROL and SOMERS TOWN. And it should work for those who don't even know who Tony Hancock was. It's not an all-time classic by any means, but in the context of British documentary-style stuff, it's one of the very few that feel both genuine and engrossing.

Maxine Peake showed her abilities with a terrifying performance as Myra Hindley. Considering she was opposite Jim Broadbent as Lord Longford and Andy Serkis as Ian Brady, that took some doing.

Here, she steals the show with a spellbinding turn as John Le Mesurier's wife Joan. Unfortunately, this drama is out of kilter with the rest of The Curse of Comedy series. All the others cover a timespan during which the subjects were at their peak of success. This covers a two year period several years after Tony Hancock was one of the biggest stars on UK TV with Hancock's Half Hour and Hancock, and also after his unsuccessful film career. The events in this dramatisation bring matters to the conclusion of Hancock's lonely suicide in Austratlia. The death scenes were unsatisfactory, as Hancock sees a ghostly image of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, the character from East Cheam which brought him fame and fortune.

A pity we didn't see Ken Stott saying "A PINT? THAT'S VERY NEARLY AN ARMFUL!"

Just when you get sick of the barrage of reality TV and the dispiritingly banal shows that seem to make up the majority of TV it comes as a real pleasure to come across a TV drama like this. A deceptively straight-forward account of the affair between Tony Hancock and Joan Le Mesurier (wife of the wonderful John) the film follows their relationship from its tentative beginnings through the problems with Hancock's chronic alcoholism, and its devastating impact on both their lives, to the inevitable ending. This is a well written piece that rarely puts a foot wrong but the real heart and soul of the film are the outstanding performances from Stott and Peake who are both exceptional. Indeed, both their performances deserve to get noticed come the next BAFTA awards.

My dad's favourite comedian was Tony Hancock although I'm too young by some years to remember his early 60's popularity or mid 60's eventual decline and fall into alcoholism and an early death. Ironically taking its title no doubt from the Hancock character's defiant assertion midway through this gritty drama that he shared billing with no-one, this in fact is a three-header with a fine understated well-measured performance from Alex Jennings as the cuckolded husband, celebrated English actor John Le Mesurier (best known as Sgt Wilson in BBC's perennial "Dad's Army"). He gets his accent and mannerisms right and conveys tellingly Le Mesurier's weary passion-less effete-ism which effectively drives his passionate wife into the arms and bed of best friend Hancock who he unselfishly invites into his home to boost his spirits (talk about bringing the wolf to your door!).

Given that the two leads get to act out a doomed affair, born of lust and fuelled by insecurity, depression and above all alcohol, their performances are naturally the dramatic centre-piece here and their at times heightened but always believable playing contrasts very well with the rest of the cast's down-home (or as Hancock has it, "provincial") playing. Ken Stott, for once not portraying a TV cop, also copes well with Hancock's accent and physical attributes and demonstrates his range with an emotionally charged performance as the hapless, parasitical, tortured yet still just lovable enough egoist in the main title role.

The writing requires him to display the full gamut of pathetic emotions a drowning alcoholic must experience until they hit rock bottom and either sink or swim. Maxine Peake is at least as good as the adulterous wife, drawn helplessly but willingly into Hancock's fading orbit. She only just survives even as she combines the separate weaknesses (so we are told) of Hancock's previous two wives into one as she turns drunkard and suicidal to try and shock Hancock back to reality. The two fantasy scenes work very well, both at the death (literally), with firstly Hancock making peace with his typecast comedic past in a dream sequence where he is becalmed by his "Lad from East Cheam" alter-ego before his overdose and especially Joan's stoic external reaction to the news of his death contrasted simultaneously to the passionately emotional outburst she suffers inside which she could never exhibit in front of her passive husband Le Mesurier.

This was an engrossing and illuminating insight into the last days of a major British comedic talent and an interesting and imaginative study of the damage that these difficult people inflict, sometimes unwittingly, on those lesser mortals who innocently stray into their extreme lives.

Loved the film any chance this being on DVD if so let me no were to get it thank you