Miss Marie Lloyd: Queen of the Music Hall (2007)

Best Avoided

UK

Television Film

Director: James Hawes

Writer: Martyn Hesford

Cinematographer: David Katznelson

Composer: Rob Lane

Cast: Jessie Wallace, Richard Armitage, Shaun Parkes, Lee Williams, Amanda Root, Matthew Marsh, Angus Barnett, Tom Payne

This typically handsome BBC production, painting a portrait of cockney music hall star Marie Lloyd, inelegantly whizzes from one barely sketched scene to the next, scarcely introducing one husband before replacing him with another, as it feverishly ticks off the historical facts without ever getting close capturing the humanity of its attractively brash heroine. Iain.Stott