My Hero - Ben Miller on Tony Hancock; TV review

Ben Miller gave us a profile of Tony Hancock with an unexpected depth of insight.

Review - My Hero: Ben Miller on Tony Hancock

It was the smaller corners of this tribute to a comic genius that made My Hero: Ben Miller on Tony Hancock worth watching.

Fair play to any comedian who, even by implication, places himself next to Tony Hancock. This fond tribute comes from the amiable Ben Miller, who wisely keeps himself firmly out of the story.

Miller doesn't seem the agonised type, whereas Hancock redefined the notion of the sad clown during his sadly truncated life. And, as Miller explores his hero's career, he finds plenty of betrayal, disappointment and dysfunction. 'A moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty,' was the BBC's verdict.

Still, while Hancock's output isn't characterised by any great consistency, his finest moments suggest a true original. As he retraces Hancock's footsteps through life and meets various of his comedy co-conspirators, Miller's excited engagement with Hancock's traces becomes palpable. Enjoyment of the resulting film will still largely depend on your feelings for Hancock himself but, if you're a fan, this will be a treat.

Radio Times review

Ben Miller perfectly describes his dolorous comedy hero, the incomparable Tony Hancock, as "carrying a sheep-like despondency and a cuddly intellectual misery". Miller first fell under Hancock's spell as a child, when his dad told him he had to watch The Blood Donor, arguably Hancock's finest half-hour. "I'd never seen anything so funny in my life."

In this sweet tribute Miller potters through Hancock's life, visiting the hotel in Bournemouth where he was brought up and chatting to his biographers. Best of all, he visits Hancock's writers, the brilliant Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who had a sometimes fractious relationship with a difficult man. And Miller has some fun with papers from the BBC archives that describe the volatile Hancock as "a moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty to the Corporation". Ouch.

As a slip of a lad, Ben Miller fell under the lugubrious spell of Tony Hancock, the legendary comic actor whose hit radio series Hancock's Half Hour, followed up by a TV version called simply Hancock, propelled him into the ranks of Britain's all-time comedy greats.

So what was it about the perpetually grumpy Hancock that touched the funny bone of the young Miller? Here he explains how watching Hancock's classic sketch The Blood Donor changed his life.

Final episode of the series in which comedians wax geographical about their forebears. Here, Ben Miller revisits the places, people and performances of the man who would become the most famous resident in East Cheam history. Delving deeper than most Hancock retrospectives - Miller even pores over bitchy memos from Beeb bigwigs about Tone's petulant nature - this is a welcome opportunity to take in Hancock's rise to popularity rather than merely his sad demise.

Using comedians to sing the praises of the performers who have inspired them has offered an interesting perspective to the usual documentary format and this occasional series ends tonight with a new tribute to Tony Hancock.

"His attitude to life infuses all of British comedy," says Ben Miller, which explains why the clips from Hancock's Half Hour, and Hancock which followed it, still have a timeless appeal.

To find out where that iconic character came from - the pompous, despondent failure - Ben meets Hancock's writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

And he revisits the various stages of his career: from the six shows a day in the London revue club where his act was just an interruption to the naked ladies, to his stab at serious drama in The Punch And Judy Man - by which time his drinking had gone beyond a joke.

Review - My Hero: Ben Miller on Tony Hancock

Homage to a genius of yesteryear works despite flimsy telly tropes.

Good news: the wonderful Geoffrey Whitehead is back in the series. He plays the stern, disapproving father of Lee's flatmate Lucy, just as he played the stern disapproving father in Worst Week of My Life (which starred Ben Miller) - and every bit as well. It's a shame the script feels more strained than usual as Lucy (Sally Bretton) visits a trade conference to try to pick up new clients - "pick up" being, to Lee's horror, the name of the game.

How he tries to intervene before she can go too far and how that gets him into trouble with her parents leads us through an enjoyably old-fashioned farce. And Whitehead gets to say the line: "I used to box for Surrey, you know!" as only he can.