Hattie

Lovely drama about the complex love life of the comedy legend that was Hattie Jacques, wonderfully played by Ruth Jones and good support by Bathurst as her husband

The darker side of the lives of actors associated with the 'Carry On' series have already provided material for several TV dramas; and this time it's the turn of Hattie Jacques with the emphasis on her ill-fated marriage to John LeMesurier.

Ruth Jones portrays Jacques as a woman with a healthy sexual appetite and great generosity of spirit that made her easy prey for good-looking young men. The film itself - beset by distracting directorial tics by Dan Zeff including wobbly steadicam photography and the inevitable switches between black & white and colour - attempts to turn this simple tale into an Antonioniesque study in alienation.

The chronology is often rather suspect, Robert Bathurst doesn't really look or sound much like Le Mesurier; while the single most egregious omission is that there are only a couple of fleeting references to Eric Sykes.

And I simply cannot believe that Esma Cannon was capable of swearing so much.

Hattie is less of a biopic of the complex Hattie Jacques (Ruth Jones) best known for the Carry On films and in the comedy series Sykes. She was married to the actor John Le Mesurier (Robert Bathurst) who at the time was a jobbing actor before he found fame for himself in Dad's Army.

This film focuses on Hattie's affair with chancer John Schofield (Aidan Turner) a used car salesman that Hattie meets in a charity function. He is not put off by Hattie's large size and makes her feel sexy and wanted. In due course he moves into the marital home as the cuckolded John moves into the spare room as Hattie schemes to arrange John to have a relationship with another woman (who he will later marry and then she will have an affair with his friend, Tony Hancock.)

Looking at this again the drama is just facile and tepid. You do not like any of them. The virile stud John, comes across as self pitying who sees Hattie as a meal ticket. (He would later leave her for an Italian heiress.) Hattie is selfish and cruel in treating her husband John and her kids so shabbily. John Le Mesurier who was well regarded in the public's affections has a charming and urbane man is shown here as a wet lettuce.

Last year I watched a BBC dramatisation of doomed comedian Tony Hancock's affair with his best friend John LeMesurier's wife Joan, little realising that this was the second time the urbane, slightly effete but popular actor, later best known as Sgt Wilson in the long running comedy series "Dad's Army, had been cuckolded. Even more surprising was to learn that his first wife was the apparently sex-less, matronly Hattie Jacques and that her affair, as well as being torrid in the extreme, was with a much younger, handsome and as the phrase is today "ripped" man, her driver John Schofield. Worse yet, she went along with her lover's idea of moving LeMesurier up to the attic room of their marital home so that Schofeld could move full time into her bed and even let LeMesurier take the blame for their inevitable divorce to protect her family image from being tarnished.

Such a remarkable story, featuring the lives of two of Britain's best-loved actors of the 60's and 70's, was always going to have a high curiosity value bordering on prurience but failed, for me, by not taking sides and playing it all too neutrally. Perhaps this was due to pressure from the family and friends of the late Ms Jacques, I would imagine, but in trying to dress her liaison with the otherwise spivvy, on-the-make Schofield as some grand love affair, both are let off far too lightly. Remember that this triangle was played out with two young children in attendance too and unsavoury doesn't even begin to describe the showbiz goings-on here. We're almost directed to have sympathy for the self-deprecating jolly fat lady getting herself a young bloke and her emotional conflict in deciding which of the two Johns to plump (sorry) for when in fact her complicity in the goings-on here is morally reprehensible.

Thus I found it an awkward watch and came away from it by not respecting or liking any of the three leads, even LeMesurier, so much is his "door-mat" impression played out. The acting is good however, Ruth Jones doing a not quite lady-like enough impression of Jacques but otherwise carrying off the physical and vocal transformation well. Robert Bathurst doesn't look much like LeMesurier facially but gets his shrug-shoulders world- weariness down-pat, while Aidan Turner is excellent as the vile Schofield, the unwelcome cuckoo in the nest. The dialogue I did find to be characterful and subtle, histrionics avoided as the situation progresses.

Life-styles of the rich and famous are always morbidly inviting but on the whole I wish I'd looked the other way, rather like Hattie should have before she started on her ill- considered affair.

There have been a few dramas recently based on the lives of the great British comedians of the 50's and 60's and Hattie is one of the best I've seen.

The acting is first rate, especially from the three principals. The period setting is well captured in the interior scenes - there are very few exterior shots, probably due to the budget. Another reviewer makes much of Hattie being a chubby lady but she was undoubtedly sexy and more so in real life than for the characters she played on screen. This is something else the film conveys very well.

The script is excellent - the real stand-out feature of the production. It's multi-layered and pays homage to the Carry On style of double entendre and elevates it to a much higher level. "Hattie" avoids being seedy but doesn't shy away from the details of this most unusual love story. Poor old John Le Mesurier! I'm off to form his appreciation society.