The Private Life of Samuel Pepys

It is more interesting if you did read Pepys diary. He was a flashlight in to a more gritty time in history. Clearly whoever wrote this only read the cliff notes. They missed the part where his wife almost burned his balls off with a red hot fireplace poker. She did that because she caught him feeling up the maids "cuny". She never found out about his other side pieces. In the plague year he retreated in th a country inn where he dined on venison pasty and , as usual, ogled every comley wench. He said more or less, " Saw this day in church lord (something I forget) and his wife who is a fine figure of a black woman and their daughters. ". It was a different world. No spoilers, the writers ignored all that.

How this can be called a comedy completely eludes me. I've been to funerals that were more fun.

The dialogue is barely discernible. Not a film I will ever watch again.

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 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?