It's more than a quarter of a century since Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise's double act was stopped in its tracks by Morecambe's untimely death - which, in the world of showbiz, is certainly enough time to be forgotten, usurped or found to be desperately unfashionable by a new generation of viewers and performers. But the pair retain enough comic sparkle to put most of their successors in the shade.

Eric and Ernie is a biopic that follows the pair from their beginnings on Jack Hylton's youth theatre circuit up until the brink of TV success in the 1950s. Written by Peter Bowker, and starring Bryan Dick as Ernie Wise, Daniel Rigby as Eric Morecambe and Victoria Wood as Morecambe's ambitious, plain-talking mother Sadie, it's a wonderful piece of drama: warm-hearted, clever, beautifully acted and funny enough to make your cheeks ache.