Burton and Taylor: Love Is The Drug

“WE’RE addicts Elizabeth, you and I.”

It begins in the New York of early 1983.

And then flashes back to London seven months before.

Richard Burton walks into Elizabeth Taylor’s 50th birthday party wearing a mink coat…

The next year they are rehearsing together for her American stage production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives.

The world’s most famous couple – married to each other twice and divorced twice – yet again at the centre of a media circus.

Burton and Taylor is a film worthy of both screen legends, generally agreed to be two of the finest actors ever.

With Taylor regarded as the world’s most beautiful woman and Burton the gloriously-voiced hellraiser every female wanted to tame.

This diamond of a 90-minute drama is broadcast on BBC4 at 9pm next Monday (July 22).

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The Hour 2: Q&A Transcript

(Now with Part Two and new pics – scroll down – ahead of episode two tonight…Wed Nov 21.)

THE welcome clatter of typewriters is back in town tonight with the return of The Hour.

Set in 1957, the second BBC2 series is a step up from the acclaimed first season with the confidence to be even bigger and bolder in its storytelling and settings.

Presenter Hector Madden (Dominic West) is dining out – and more – on his national celebrity while producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) does all the work back at the BBC.

The deliciously dry Lix (Anna Chancellor) remains on the foreign beat and knows a lot more than she cares to tell, still clutching a glass of Scotch at all times of the day.

And just what is her link to the intriguing and ever so slightly OCD new Head of News Randall Brown, played by Peter Capaldi?

There’s a dramatic re-appearance for Freddie, played by new Bond star Ben Whishaw, who was fired in the first series.

And an unexpected new direction has been cooked up for Hector’s frustrated wife Marnie (Oona Chaplin).

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Appropriate Adult: Fred West Drama

Emily Watson as Janet Leach and Dominic West as Fred West

“THIS is a true story. What follows is based on extensive research, interviews and published accounts.

“Some scenes have been created for the purpose of dramatisation.”

So begins Appropriate Adult, ITV1’s two-part Fred West drama.

Or rather the story of how trainee social worker Janet Leach was plunged into the nightmare world of serial killers Fred and Rose West.

I watched both 90 minute instalments of the two-part production in one sitting earlier this month and was hugely impressed by the way it had been handled.

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The Hour

Bel Rowley (Romola Garai), Hector Madden (Dominic West) and Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw)

“THE newsreels are dead. We’ve bored the public for too long.”

So begins The Hour, a fascinating new BBC2 drama series set in the changing media and political world of the 1950s.

Episode one finds the BBC News at London’s Alexandra Palace still fixated with reporting on the daily lives of society darlings.

Frustrated TV news reporter Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw), working alongside Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) knows there are far more important stories to tell.

Both seize their chance with a move to Lime Grove studios in west London, heralding the dawn on a modern and questioning topical news programme called The Hour.

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Moving On: Plays For Our Today

“IT feels a lot harder now than when I started,” said writer John Fay.

“There’s definitely more writers and actors out of work. There’s less getting done.

“And I do think that comes down to money. If people aren’t investing in it, then it’s not getting made, is it?'”

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