Fear of Fanny

As the top TV chef on the BBC, Fanny Craddock showing the masses how to produce elaborate dishes on a tight budget. Working with her long suffering husband Johnnie, Fanny is a domineering character who likes things just the way she likes them – an attitude that comes across on the screen no matter how she holds it in. Her children are remote and those that work with her generally do so in fear of their next mistake. At the height of her fame though, this aspect of her character starts to eat back on her life.

I'm getting older but I'm not old enough to remember when Fanny Craddock was a major influence in the world of TV chefs and generally I ignore their programmes anyway. However I was slightly aware of Craddock just because of the domineering and the way she used to talk down to her audience as if they were all a bit below her. This film focuses on the years when she was established and then moves through as her style quickly gets dated and her career comes to an end. In doing this the film never gets that deep into the character but yet does enough to show what a tragic figure she becomes as a result of her own actions. In this regard it is simplistic but interesting enough to work for what it is. Despite the terribly comedy title, the film is not that funny aside from the figure of fun that Craddock herself was. It is sad to watch her break and, although some actual depth and insight would have been nice, the events themselves are enough to carry the film. I did think at the end though that, apart from her recipes being stuck several decades back, Craddock would be in her element now as television has become cruel and full of matriarchal types (think Weakest Link, How Clean is Your House, You Are What You Eat etc etc); how ironic that barely a generation ago the thing that essentially ended her career would now have producers clambering to sign her up for a game show of some sort.

As Craddock, Davis does a very good job on the surface and is convincing throughout as this battleaxe of a woman. She struggles to find a person within the character but this is the material's problem as much as it is hers. Gatiss is a little bit better but again he doesn't have much in the way of character to work with – he has been told "you are long suffering" and left to get on with it. The rest of the cast fill in around the edges nicely enough but at the end the film doesn't even belong to Davis, it belongs to the caricature that was Fanny Craddock as this is what looms large over every scene.

Worth a look then for a potty history of who this famous TV chef was in terms of her public life and as such it is entertaining and quite interesting. However those looking for understanding and/or insight into why she was and who she really was when she was stripped bare in the quiet moments will not find anything that clever here.

This interesting, if rather boring, piece of nostalgia was rescued by the two central performances. Julia Davis, as the awful Fanny Craddock and her much put-upon sidekick Johnny (Mike Gatiss) provided astonishingly accurate portraits of the first TV chef and partner - reviving memories of those terrible TV programmes with their disgusting concoctions. After her triumphs in 'Nighty Night', Julia Davis now shows us a very different virago.

The private life of the two central characters was less interesting. Apart from allusions to Fanny's rather more adventurous past and her seriously unpleasant tantrums and manipulations, there wasn't much to make a full-length drama from. The other members of the odd household paled into insignificance alongside Fanny. So much so that the later part of the drama was enlivened only by a cameo from the Benny Hill Show! But there really wasn't enough meat to justify this bio-pic of an unpleasant and rather disturbed woman.

This was a great show about a deeply insecure woman with intense emotional problems. The show catalogued a lifetime of pretence and despair and the pain she inflicted on others most notably her daughter in law.

I wasn't old enough to see her shows the first time but I remember the infamous blue boiled eggs and the green mashed potatoes as well as other equally hideous food.

Her treatment of the dying Johnny when she couldn't even bring herself to visit him in hospital seemed especially harsh but Fanny suffered from her own demons which seemed to torment her constantly.

Julia Davis is a brilliant writer and actress but I found this utterly boring. It was billed as a black comedy but it prompted not one laugh. It was not particularly black either. The recreation of the period seemed meticulous and rang true to me, who vaguely remembers the programmes. But such ingenuity deserves a better script. One is tempted to suggest that the subject matter was just not that interesting. However, there were hints that Craddock's character was extraordinarily complex. But left as hints they did not lead anywhere. I suspect that Julia Davis was too constrained by the need for this biopic to be true to the known facts to be able to produce anything funny or even interesting.

Firstly, in every video of the real Fanny Craddock, the makeup is nowhere near as absurd as this parody of a movie makes it to be.

In real life she looked normal, in this film she looks like a blow up rubber doll with added makeup. Seriously, if you want to actually watch this woman cook and to see what she actually DID look like, watch one of the many youtube clips. Nothing like this absurd mess.

Next, I have no idea what Fanny was like in real life, but if the excruciatingly over the top make up here is anything to go by, I'd say there were even more ridiculous liberties taken and that her personality was depicted poorly here or taken to levels meant to be entertaining, but were not.

This film is neither entertaining, good, particularly interesting or meaningful.

I learned nothing of the real person. I can take from this that she was demanding, perfectionist, self absorbed and possibly quite brilliant, but I don't know, as this debacle just tells us she's a total looney.

I'm sure she brought something to the seriously terrible food in Britain at the time, as many have stated in documentaries, so kudo for that.

Boring, horribly over acted by Julia Davis, just horribly.