What A Performance! Pioneers Of Popular Entertainment
- TV documentary
- BBC Four
- 2015
- 3 episodes (1 series)
Frank Skinner & Suzy Klein explore the history of British popular entertainment in the 100 years before the arrival of television. Features Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein.
Episode menu
Series 1, Episode 1 - The Birth Of Music Hall
Further details
In the first episode Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein explore the birth of Britain's first mass entertainment industry, the 19th century music hall. They discover the colourful and sometimes dangerous world of its entertainers and get under the skin of some of its greatest stars. They discover more about big household names such as Marie Lloyd and Champagne Charlie, as well as less familiar names - including the eccentric Victorian comic Dan Leno, later copied by Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.
Not only do Frank and Suzy dig into the history of these stars and the world from which they emerged, but they also study their acts and try their hand at performing them at the end of the show.
Broadcast details
- Date
- Thursday 3rd December 2015
- Time
- 9pm
- Channel
- BBC Four
- Length
- 60 minutes
Repeats
Show past repeats
Cast & crew
| Frank Skinner | Host / Presenter |
| Suzy Klein | Host / Presenter |
| Michael Kilgarriff | Self |
| Richard Schoch (as Professor Richard Schoch) | Self |
| Fern Riddell | Self |
| Caroline Radcliffe (as Dr Caroline Radcliffe) | Self |
| Johnny Dennis | Self |
| Tony Lidington | Self |
| Louise Wingrove | Self |
| Jan Hunt | Self |
| Derek Scott (as Professor Derek Scott) | Self |
| Tim Cockerill | Self |
| Ellen Hobson | Director |
| Amy Morgan | Producer |
| Aisling O'Connor | Executive Producer |
| Jamie Isaacs | Executive Producer |
| Claire Whalley | Executive Producer |
| Ellen Hobson | Producer |
| Bradley Richards | Editor |
| Alex Harwood | Composer |
Press
What a Performance! review
The good old days weren't that good after all.
Sean O'Grady, The Independent, 4th December 2015What A Performance! review
Is that Les Dawson after a diet? No it's Frank Skinner in a dress.
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail, 4th December 2015Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein present the first in this three-part canter through the history of British entertainment in the time before television. Tonight, they begin with the music-hall tradition, stopping off at Marie Lloyd, Champagne Charlie and comedian Dan Leno - widely believed to be the act copied by silent screen upstarts such as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Skinner and Klein also form their own act to try their hand at old-school showbiz.
Julia Raeside, The Guardian, 3rd December 2015Why pretend that Victorian music-hall comedy was funny?
The strangest thing is that the presenters apparently considered that part of their brief was to pretend that everything we saw remains pure comedy gold.
James Walton, The Spectator, 3rd December 2015Frank Skinner on Britain's first stand-up, Dan Leno
Frank Skinner claims Dan Leno is the father of British comedy inspiring Peter Sellers and Charlie Chaplin: but who was he? Neil Armstrong finds out.
Neil Armstrong, The Telegraph, 3rd December 2015What did we do before TV? For a start, people like me wouldn't have had a job and people in tracksuits wouldn't have had easy access to DNA tests. So, was everything terrible before television?
Certainly not, says this new series. Presented by Frank Skinner, and Suzy Klein, it goes back in time to ask how the masses found their entertainment without TV.
The rich had their theatres, opera houses and musical concerts, but where did the noisy rabble go for their kicks? Their chief source of entertainment was the music hall which offered a pastiche of elegance, with its velvet curtains, brocade and lights, but the acts on stage were hardly refined: they were often loud and bawdy and the audiences adored them.
The most famous star from that era was Marie Lloyd, the singer, but we're also told of Dan Leno, one of the first stand-up comedians, a man who counted Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel amongst his fans.
Skinner and Klein seem to have a great time in this series, dressing up as these famous performers and trying out their routines, the content of which might seem a bit silly or tame now, but that's because TV has jaded us. Imagine how it seemed when you were just out of the factory after a 14 hour shift, having spent the day amongst clanking machinery trying to whip at your hair and nab your knuckles.
Julie McDowall, The National (Scotland), 3rd December 2015What a Performance! review: 'enthusiastic but clueless'
Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein should have left this documentary about Victorian entertainment to the experts, says Gerard O'Donovan.
Gerard O'Donovan, The Telegraph, 3rd December 2015This lively three-part series sees comedian Frank Skinner and music presenter Suzy Klein go back in time to the days before TVs entered our living rooms in 1955.
And it's not just a dry historical programme - they even have a go at creating vintage entertainment themselves!
"We tell the story from the music hall era of the 19th century through to the golden age of variety and the working men's clubs of the 1950s," says Frank, 58.
"We find out all we can about the great acts of the past - a time when Britain really did have talent."
In the opening episode, Frank and Suzy focus on music halls, and famous names such as Marie Lloyd and Champagne Charlie.
They study their acts and try their hand at performing them at the end of the show. "It's harder than it looks," laughs Frank.
Susanna Galton, The Mirror, 28th November 2015