The Private Life of Samuel Pepys

This is the movie that Steve Coogan said he wanted to make. His desire was to play someone morally ambiguous and he succeeded brilliantly! His Samuel Pepys was a real person, complex, desiring to be good, and yet aware that society and his own nature conspired against him. Lou Doillion as Elisabeth and Sally Rogers as Betty are also superb - and although when I started watching, I was afraid I would keep seeing Alan Partridge, that wasn't the case. The dialogue was witty, the story well told (brilliantly, in fact) and other standout characters were Will Hewer and Lord Montagu, cleverly cynical and tolerant of Pepys' earnest concern for his job and doing the best in a society that expected him to be corrupt. All praise to the writer and all the actors.

England, 1660s. Samuel Pepys, secretary of the Navy Board, is accused of treachery and corruption. Things look grim: his nemesis, Lord Shaftesbury, is the judge and has bribed the jury. Pepys remembers the events that lead to this point, his marriage, his lovers, his dealings while on the Navy Board. All of these are captured in his diary.

Samuel Pepys is an important figure in British history, helping reform the Royal Navy and putting it on a path to being the most powerful navy on Earth, a factor that would shape Britain's future for the next three centuries. He is also famous for his diary, a document that helped historians reconstruct many of the events of mid-17th century Britain.

This film touches on these events but doesn't emphasise them much. As the title implies, this film is largely about Pepys's private life. Considering his easily-wandering eye it is reasonably interesting and amusing though never becomes particularly engaging.

Steve Coogan is fairly good as Pepys though the role is hardly a stretch. He basically doing Alan Partridge set in the 17th century. The script is funny in spells but hardly laugh-a-minute. It is also half-drama but hard to take seriously due to the comedy. Maybe that's the problem: the neither-fish-nor-fowl comedy vs drama aspect.

Overall, it's interesting and edifying enough but not great.

I read a few reviews of this before I saw it and they all said Steve Coogan acted like "Alan Partridge in a wig", well I'm sorry but he did nothing of the sort! He did a wonderful job, possibly his best acting job yet in my opinion. It is totally unfair for people to compare everything that Steve Coogan does to Alan Partridge. He is a very talented actor and watching this last night I think he proves it!

I found this an entertaining one-off which certainly enhanced my knowledge of Pepys above the previous level of "didn't he write a diary at some point in the past?"

Being a fan of Coogan it's always difficult to look beyond your expectations of what he's going to be like based on his well-known previous characters. I'm sure it would have become easier had this been stretched out into a mini-series but there you go.

Interesting to see this so soon after the Charles II Power & Passion mini-series which finished a few weeks back. Being contemporaneous (get me!) the two programmes shared a lot of the historical background and quite a few of the characters.

In summary, well worth watching - even without considering the not-insignificant sexual content and gratuitous boob shots :-)

I really enjoyed this programme. Steve Coogan's usual roles involve him being slightly if not completely obnoxious for laughs, showing complete ineptitude in social situations.

The Pepys role however, really let him show another side of his character, and I'd love to see more. I found the character to be sexy, vulnerable and irreverent, intelligent and naughty, a very appealing proposition. Like Rowan Atkinson in the earlier Black Adder series, he shows funny men can be extremely sexy when they take up struggle of an everyman who rather than being the lowest common denominator, is closer to the average thinking man. Someone who can be rational and intelligent, who loses but sometimes wins in social and sexual games, and in love, and has real emotional struggles. More parts like this for Coogan would be great. There is enough buffoonery on the political scene to make me crave sexy funny intellectuals in entertainment. Am I alone?