The Curse of Steptoe
Encyclopedia
The Curse of Steptoe is a television play
which was first broadcast on 19 March 2008 on BBC Four
as part of a season of dramas about television personalities. It stars Jason Isaacs
as Harry H. Corbett
and Phil Davis as Wilfrid Brambell
. The drama is based upon the actors' on-and-off-screen relationship during the making of the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son
, and is based on interviews with colleagues, friends and family of the actors, and the Steptoe writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
The screenplay was written by Brian Fillis, also responsible for the similarly themed 2006 drama Fear of Fanny, which is about television personality Fanny Cradock
off-screen. The 66-minute film is directed by Michael Samuels
and produced by Ben Bickerton.
The drama was widely acclaimed and won the Royal Television Society
Award 2008 for "Single Drama". However, the drama generated controversy due to perceived historical inaccuracies, and following complaints to the BBC by Corbett's family, two revised versions of the drama have been broadcast. Despite these revisions, an investigation by the BBC Trust found that the drama was still unfair and inaccurate. DVDs of the drama have been withdrawn from sale, and there will be no future broadcasts without further editing.
at Joan Littlewood
's Theatre Workshop
at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, looking beyond that to Henry V
at the Old Vic
, and tipped to eclipse Gielgud
. Meanwhile, across town at the BBC Television Centre
, writers Galton and Simpson
have parted from their longtime star, Tony Hancock
, and are given a free hand. They write a series of one-off plays
starring actors, not comics who will expect every line to contain a laugh.
The Offer
, in which they cast Corbett in his first television role, is wildly successful and evolves into an uneasy, decade-long comedy partnership between Corbett and the alcoholic, self-loathing homosexual Brambell. Corbett's stage career fades quickly from typecasting
, and his first marriage to comic actress Sheila Steafel
suffers from his womanising, while Brambell's drinking and his relaxed approach to acting cause conflict between him and Corbett, a method actor
once described as "the British Marlon Brando". Off-screen, Brambell is secretive and dislikes the trappings of fame, and his worst fears are realised when, entrapped by a policeman in a public toilet, he is prosecuted for gross indecency
and the details of his failed marriage are published in the newspapers.
The show, and the actors' careers, are milked dry. Corbett is unable to obtain work that is not a variation on his cockney rag and bone man
persona. At the start, Corbett as Richard II had spoken the words "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," and at the end he says them to himself as he awaits his cue in a live recording of Steptoe and Son. Finally Corbett is unable to find any work except pantomime
or a stage version of Steptoe in Australia
. This, however, was untrue (see Harry's filmography for 1977). They also implied that Harry was reluctant to partake in the tour when it was in fact his suggestion. The idea was put to him by a theatre producer. Having then contacted Wilfrid Brambell to see if he was available, it was Harry who put the idea forward to writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, not the other way round as the writers fictionalised in the show.
its highest audience figures, estimated as 1.41 million viewers, a 7% share of multichannel audiences between 9pm and 10.05pm, based on overnight returns. Reviews were good. The Guardian
described the two stars as "striking, like Walter Matthau
and George Burns
in The Odd Couple
" (cf. The Sunshine Boys
), and The Times
praised "the tough, funny, sad script...and the subtly glorious performances". The Independent
s reviewer said "Anyone who remembers David Barrie
's Channel 4 documentary When Steptoe Met Son, broadcast in 2002, won't have found all this particularly revelatory, but Isaacs and Davis played it so well that it had a fresh life."
The drama won the Royal Television Society
Award 2008 for "Single Drama", beating Margaret Thatcher - The Long Walk To Finchley
and The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. However, the Royal Television Society have since added a caveat to the award that "since the award presentation to The Curse of Steptoe, complaints about the programme were made to the BBC Trust which found it to be 'unfair and inaccurate'".
's nephew from his second marriage released a statement which claimed the drama was inaccurate and defamatory. In addition to numerous factual errors, he claimed that the two actors did not hate each other, and that the suggestion that Steptoe ruined either actor's career was nonsense.
The writers of Steptoe and Son, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
, also distanced themselves from the drama stating in a letter to The Times
published shortly before the drama aired that "during this entire [12 year] period we were unaware of any conflict between the actors save from the occasional gritting of Wilfrid's false teeth when Harry had the perceived audacity to give him a little direction. At all other times they were the acme of professionalism". In a radio interview on 15 January 2009, Alan Simpson stated that the drama was "not at all accurate", while Ray Galton claimed "We didn’t recognise any of that. Really didn’t". Both agreed that any notion of friction or hatred between Corbett and Brambell was inaccurate, stating "They worked beautifully together".
, regarding comments made by Phil Davis in an interview on BBC Breakfast
. Davis gave the impression that The Curse of Steptoe was entirely factual and claimed that Brambell and Corbett loathed each other, whereas the balance of first-hand evidence is that this was by no means the case.
On 24 November 2008, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit upheld another complaint by Corbett’s brother-in-law regarding the drama itself. It ruled that the drama gave the impression that Corbett’s relationship with his second wife (Maureen Corbett) "preceded, and might have contributed to, the breakdown of his first marriage to Sheila Steafel, whereas the chronology it had established did not support this. The drama also gave the impression that the end of Steptoe and Son was immediately preceded, if not precipitated, by the birth of Corbett's first child. However, the two events were separated by eight years, so the device tended to mislead viewers significantly on an aspect of the narrative central to their interest in the drama". The drama would not be re-broadcast without appropriate editing and content information.
A revised version of the drama was broadcast on 28 and 29 December 2008 on BBC Four
, running 23 seconds shorter than the original, and preceded by an on-screen disclaimer: "The following drama is inspired by the lives of real people. For the purpose of the narrative some events have been invented or conflated".
The BBC Trust
Editorial Standards Committee partially upheld a complaints appeal by Corbett’s brother-in-law, stating on 30 June 2009 that "the essential elements of unfairness to Maureen Corbett were still present in the revised version of the programme and that this constituted a breach of the Fairness and Accuracy guidelines". In particular, "the timeline of the drama with regard to the relationship between Maureen and Harry, and Harry’s separation from his first wife, did not correlate with the facts", and "the implication in the drama that the child of Maureen and Harry had been conceived as a result of a casual relationship between the two was inaccurate and unfair". The Trust also warned the BBC that “while it was the right of dramatists to change events for dramatic purposes, the basic facts should remain as a framework on which to build the drama”. The Trust also thought the on-screen caption could have been clearer, and warned “the use of captions such as this should not be regarded as a ‘blank cheque’ for the indiscriminate and excessive use of dramatic licence”. Once again, the drama would not be shown again until further editing had taken place.
A third, re-revised version of the drama was broadcast on 2 December 2009 on BBC HD
, now running 69 seconds shorter than the original. The same version was also released on a BBC DVD on 14 June 2010 entitled “Legends of Comedy”, together with two other episodes from the drama series Frankie Howerd Rather You Than Me and Hughie Green Most Sincerely.
On 22 December 2010, the BBC Trust
Editorial Standards Committee upheld a further appeal by Corbett’s brother-in-law. The ruling stated that the revised portrayal in The Curse of Steptoe was still “unfair and inaccurate”, and “despite the edits made, further action was required by the BBC to remove the impression of a casual relationship between Maureen and Harry”. The BBC Trust
subsequently ordered that DVDs of the drama should be recalled.
On 23 March 2011, the BBC Trust
Editorial Standards Committee published a report into the withdrawal of the DVDs. Evidently the publisher 2Entertain failed to inform the BBC Shop that the DVD should be withdrawn, and sales continued until 3 January 2011. 2Entertain subsequently instructed its lawyers to perform a worldwide trawl to ensure that no other retailers were still selling the DVD. The Committee was concerned by the failure to withdraw The Curse of Steptoe from sale in a timely manner but was satisfied that the problem had been treated seriously and steps had been taken to prevent similar issues in the future. It also "wished to apologise on behalf of the BBC
for the original editorial breaches in The Curse of Steptoe and the fact that subsequent remedial action had been ineffective in removing the unfairness."
said it would write to the BBC Executive requesting that the BBC Editorial Guidelines be revised to address dramatised biopics (also termed "docudrama
") with regard to the presentation of fact and the use of dramatic licence. The new set of guidelines were published on 12 October 2010, with Section 6.4.29 specifically addressing "Portrayal of Real People in Drama". Where the drama goes against the wishes of the individual portrayed or their surviving near relatives, approval must be sought from the BBC's Director of Editorial Policy and Standards, and will be given only if three criteria are met: (1) the portrayal is fair; (2) the portrayal is based on a substantial and well-sourced body of evidence whenever practicable; and (3) there is a clear public interest.
Shortly after the BBC Trust
upheld the further appeal by Corbett’s brother-in-law on 22 December 2010, it was announced that the drama's Executive Producer, Ben Evans, had been made redundant by the BBC, along with 21 other drama production posts. Evans confirmed to The Stage
newspaper that he was leaving the BBC, but refused to comment on whether his redundancy was compulsory or voluntary.
In an article in The Guardian
newspaper published on 15 January 2011, writer Sarah Dempster pointed out that The Curse of Steptoe and other "nostalgic retellings of the lives of Tony Hancock
, Frankie Howerd
, Kenneth Williams
and Eric & Ernie
have been ratings winners, but fictionalised accounts can land the Beeb in hot water", and she questioned whether the latest, examining Hattie Jacques
, will be the last. "The biopic's central tenet appears to be that lurking within a dead star's private life – or rather her "private life" as according to scriptwriter, touchy BBC mandarin, etc – is the secret to their genius or, at the very least, their lasting popularity. While the prurient appeal of such an approach is obvious, there remains the fact that this is someone else's version of events. It reveals nothing. Would anyone have made Hattie if she hadn't been famous? Is the plot interesting enough to stand on its own merits? Not really. So. Enough with this mass light-ent grave plundering. Down with the heritage fossicking, the interpretive biographical brass-rubbing, the wilting tropes, broken metaphorical harnesses, deserted theatres, beige tanktops and indiscriminate mythologisation of performers who happened to live during a perceived Golden Age™ of Our Collective Cultural Past® Let's instead allow our heroes and heroines to gather dust in our memories, their talent allowed to live for ever – free from the reductive pincers of the gimlet-eyed TV biographer – in their films, TV specials and yellowing holiday snaps. It's what they would have wanted."
Television play
From the 1950s until the early 1980s, the television play was a popular television programming genre in the United Kingdom, with a shorter span in the United States. The genre was often associated with the social realist-influenced British drama style known as "kitchen sink realism", which depicted...
which was first broadcast on 19 March 2008 on BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
as part of a season of dramas about television personalities. It stars Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs is an English actor born in Liverpool, who is best known for his performance as the villain Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, the brutal Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot and as lifelong criminal Michael Caffee in the internationally broadcast American television series...
as Harry H. Corbett
Harry H. Corbett
Harry H. Corbett OBE was an English actor.Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s...
and Phil Davis as Wilfrid Brambell
Wilfrid Brambell
Henry Wilfrid Brambell was an Irish film and television actor best known for his role in the British television series Steptoe and Son. He also performed alongside The Beatles in their film A Hard Day's Night, playing Paul McCartney's fictional grandfather.- Early life :Brambell was born in Dublin...
. The drama is based upon the actors' on-and-off-screen relationship during the making of the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about two rag and bone men living in Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old...
, and is based on interviews with colleagues, friends and family of the actors, and the Steptoe writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
The screenplay was written by Brian Fillis, also responsible for the similarly themed 2006 drama Fear of Fanny, which is about television personality Fanny Cradock
Fanny Cradock
Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey , better known as Fanny Cradock, was an English restaurant critic, television cook and writer who mostly worked with her then common-law husband Johnnie Cradock, adopting his surname long before they married. She was the daughter of the novelist and lyricist Archibald...
off-screen. The 66-minute film is directed by Michael Samuels
Michael Samuels (director)
Michael Samuels is British television director, producer and writer.His works include Any Human Heart, Brookside, Eastenders, The Curse of Steptoe, The Falklands Play, The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, and The Vice.-References:...
and produced by Ben Bickerton.
The drama was widely acclaimed and won the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
Award 2008 for "Single Drama". However, the drama generated controversy due to perceived historical inaccuracies, and following complaints to the BBC by Corbett's family, two revised versions of the drama have been broadcast. Despite these revisions, an investigation by the BBC Trust found that the drama was still unfair and inaccurate. DVDs of the drama have been withdrawn from sale, and there will be no future broadcasts without further editing.
Plot summary
The play covers the entire history of the televised series, skipping over the five-year break between 1965 and 1970 when no episodes were recorded. It starts with Corbett, then a rising Shakespearean actor, starring as Richard IIRichard II (play)
King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
at Joan Littlewood
Joan Littlewood
Joan Maud Littlewood was a British theatre director, noted for her work in developing the left-wing Theatre Workshop...
's Theatre Workshop
Theatre Workshop
Theatre Workshop is a theatre group noted for their director, Joan Littlewood. Many actors of the 1950s and 1960s received their training and first exposure with the company...
at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, looking beyond that to Henry V
Henry V (play)
Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to be written in approximately 1599. Its full titles are The Cronicle History of Henry the Fifth and The Life of Henry the Fifth...
at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
, and tipped to eclipse Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
. Meanwhile, across town at the BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre at White City in West London is the headquarters of BBC Television. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, it remains one of the largest to this day; having featured over the years as backdrop to many BBC programmes, it is one of the most readily recognisable such facilities...
, writers Galton and Simpson
Galton and Simpson
Ray Galton OBE , and Alan Simpson OBE , are British scriptwriters who met in 1948 at a tuberculosis sanatorium, the Surrey county sanatorium near Godalming, on which the sitcom Get Well Soon was based...
have parted from their longtime star, Tony Hancock
Tony Hancock
Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...
, and are given a free hand. They write a series of one-off plays
Comedy Playhouse
Comedy Playhouse was a long-running British anthology series of one-off unrelated sitcoms that aired for 120 episodes from 1961 to 1975. Many episodes later graduated to their own series, including Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served?...
starring actors, not comics who will expect every line to contain a laugh.
The Offer
Comedy Playhouse (series 1)
The first series of Comedy Playhouse, the long-running BBC series, aired from 15 December 1961 to 16 February 1962. All the episodes were written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.-Background:...
, in which they cast Corbett in his first television role, is wildly successful and evolves into an uneasy, decade-long comedy partnership between Corbett and the alcoholic, self-loathing homosexual Brambell. Corbett's stage career fades quickly from typecasting
Typecasting (acting)
In TV, film, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character; one or more particular roles; or, characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups...
, and his first marriage to comic actress Sheila Steafel
Sheila Steafel
Sheila Steafel is a South African-born actress who has lived all her adult life in the United Kingdom.Steafel, who was born in Johannesburg, appeared in many classic television series, including: The Frost Report, Z-Cars, Sykes, The Kenny Everett Television Show, Minder, The Ghosts of Motley Hall,...
suffers from his womanising, while Brambell's drinking and his relaxed approach to acting cause conflict between him and Corbett, a method actor
Method acting
Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances...
once described as "the British Marlon Brando". Off-screen, Brambell is secretive and dislikes the trappings of fame, and his worst fears are realised when, entrapped by a policeman in a public toilet, he is prosecuted for gross indecency
Gross indecency
Gross indecency is a UK and Canadian legal term of art which was used in the definition of the following criminal offences:*Gross indecency between men, contrary to section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 and later contrary to section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956.*Indecency with a...
and the details of his failed marriage are published in the newspapers.
The show, and the actors' careers, are milked dry. Corbett is unable to obtain work that is not a variation on his cockney rag and bone man
Rag and bone man
Rag and bone man is a British phrase for a junk dealer. Historically the phrase referred to an individual who would travel the streets of a city with a horsedrawn cart, and would collect old rags for making fabric and paper, bones for making glue, scrap iron for recycling, and assorted miscellany...
persona. At the start, Corbett as Richard II had spoken the words "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," and at the end he says them to himself as he awaits his cue in a live recording of Steptoe and Son. Finally Corbett is unable to find any work except pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
or a stage version of Steptoe in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. This, however, was untrue (see Harry's filmography for 1977). They also implied that Harry was reluctant to partake in the tour when it was in fact his suggestion. The idea was put to him by a theatre producer. Having then contacted Wilfrid Brambell to see if he was available, it was Harry who put the idea forward to writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, not the other way round as the writers fictionalised in the show.
Reception
The 19 March 2008, broadcast of The Curse of Steptoe brought BBC FourBBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
its highest audience figures, estimated as 1.41 million viewers, a 7% share of multichannel audiences between 9pm and 10.05pm, based on overnight returns. Reviews were good. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described the two stars as "striking, like Walter Matthau
Walter Matthau
Walter Matthau was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears...
and George Burns
George Burns
George Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television and movies, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became...
in The Odd Couple
The Odd Couple (film)
The Odd Couple is a 1968 comedy film written by Neil Simon, based on his play The Odd Couple, directed by Gene Saks, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau...
" (cf. The Sunshine Boys
The Sunshine Boys (film)
The Sunshine Boys is a 1975 comedy film directed by Herbert Ross and produced by Ray Stark, based on the play of the same name by Neil Simon. The cast included real-life experienced vaudevillian actor George Burns as Lewis, Walter Matthau as Clark, and Richard Benjamin as Ben, with Lee Meredith, F....
), and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
praised "the tough, funny, sad script...and the subtly glorious performances". The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
s reviewer said "Anyone who remembers David Barrie
David Barrie
David Barrie is a designer, producer and director of urban renewal, citizen involvement and media projects and programs....
's Channel 4 documentary When Steptoe Met Son, broadcast in 2002, won't have found all this particularly revelatory, but Isaacs and Davis played it so well that it had a fresh life."
The drama won the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
Award 2008 for "Single Drama", beating Margaret Thatcher - The Long Walk To Finchley
The Long Walk to Finchley
Margaret Thatcher - The Long Walk to Finchley, subtitled in the initial credits How Maggie Might Have Done It, is a 2008 BBC Four television drama based on the early political career of the young Margaret Thatcher , from her attempts to gain a seat in Dartford in 1949 via invasion to her first...
and The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. However, the Royal Television Society have since added a caveat to the award that "since the award presentation to The Curse of Steptoe, complaints about the programme were made to the BBC Trust which found it to be 'unfair and inaccurate'".
Criticism
Following the broadcast, Harry H. CorbettHarry H. Corbett
Harry H. Corbett OBE was an English actor.Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s...
's nephew from his second marriage released a statement which claimed the drama was inaccurate and defamatory. In addition to numerous factual errors, he claimed that the two actors did not hate each other, and that the suggestion that Steptoe ruined either actor's career was nonsense.
The writers of Steptoe and Son, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
Galton and Simpson
Ray Galton OBE , and Alan Simpson OBE , are British scriptwriters who met in 1948 at a tuberculosis sanatorium, the Surrey county sanatorium near Godalming, on which the sitcom Get Well Soon was based...
, also distanced themselves from the drama stating in a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
published shortly before the drama aired that "during this entire [12 year] period we were unaware of any conflict between the actors save from the occasional gritting of Wilfrid's false teeth when Harry had the perceived audacity to give him a little direction. At all other times they were the acme of professionalism". In a radio interview on 15 January 2009, Alan Simpson stated that the drama was "not at all accurate", while Ray Galton claimed "We didn’t recognise any of that. Really didn’t". Both agreed that any notion of friction or hatred between Corbett and Brambell was inaccurate, stating "They worked beautifully together".
BBC response
On 1 October 2008, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit upheld a complaint by the brother-in-law of Harry H. CorbettHarry H. Corbett
Harry H. Corbett OBE was an English actor.Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s...
, regarding comments made by Phil Davis in an interview on BBC Breakfast
BBC Breakfast
BBC Breakfast is the morning television news programme simulcast on BBC One and the BBC News channel. It is presented live from BBC Television Centre in White City, West London, and contains a mixture of news, sport, weather, business and feature items...
. Davis gave the impression that The Curse of Steptoe was entirely factual and claimed that Brambell and Corbett loathed each other, whereas the balance of first-hand evidence is that this was by no means the case.
On 24 November 2008, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit upheld another complaint by Corbett’s brother-in-law regarding the drama itself. It ruled that the drama gave the impression that Corbett’s relationship with his second wife (Maureen Corbett) "preceded, and might have contributed to, the breakdown of his first marriage to Sheila Steafel, whereas the chronology it had established did not support this. The drama also gave the impression that the end of Steptoe and Son was immediately preceded, if not precipitated, by the birth of Corbett's first child. However, the two events were separated by eight years, so the device tended to mislead viewers significantly on an aspect of the narrative central to their interest in the drama". The drama would not be re-broadcast without appropriate editing and content information.
A revised version of the drama was broadcast on 28 and 29 December 2008 on BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
, running 23 seconds shorter than the original, and preceded by an on-screen disclaimer: "The following drama is inspired by the lives of real people. For the purpose of the narrative some events have been invented or conflated".
The BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
Editorial Standards Committee partially upheld a complaints appeal by Corbett’s brother-in-law, stating on 30 June 2009 that "the essential elements of unfairness to Maureen Corbett were still present in the revised version of the programme and that this constituted a breach of the Fairness and Accuracy guidelines". In particular, "the timeline of the drama with regard to the relationship between Maureen and Harry, and Harry’s separation from his first wife, did not correlate with the facts", and "the implication in the drama that the child of Maureen and Harry had been conceived as a result of a casual relationship between the two was inaccurate and unfair". The Trust also warned the BBC that “while it was the right of dramatists to change events for dramatic purposes, the basic facts should remain as a framework on which to build the drama”. The Trust also thought the on-screen caption could have been clearer, and warned “the use of captions such as this should not be regarded as a ‘blank cheque’ for the indiscriminate and excessive use of dramatic licence”. Once again, the drama would not be shown again until further editing had taken place.
A third, re-revised version of the drama was broadcast on 2 December 2009 on BBC HD
BBC HD
BBC HD is a high-definition television network provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007...
, now running 69 seconds shorter than the original. The same version was also released on a BBC DVD on 14 June 2010 entitled “Legends of Comedy”, together with two other episodes from the drama series Frankie Howerd Rather You Than Me and Hughie Green Most Sincerely.
On 22 December 2010, the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
Editorial Standards Committee upheld a further appeal by Corbett’s brother-in-law. The ruling stated that the revised portrayal in The Curse of Steptoe was still “unfair and inaccurate”, and “despite the edits made, further action was required by the BBC to remove the impression of a casual relationship between Maureen and Harry”. The BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
subsequently ordered that DVDs of the drama should be recalled.
On 23 March 2011, the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
Editorial Standards Committee published a report into the withdrawal of the DVDs. Evidently the publisher 2Entertain failed to inform the BBC Shop that the DVD should be withdrawn, and sales continued until 3 January 2011. 2Entertain subsequently instructed its lawyers to perform a worldwide trawl to ensure that no other retailers were still selling the DVD. The Committee was concerned by the failure to withdraw The Curse of Steptoe from sale in a timely manner but was satisfied that the problem had been treated seriously and steps had been taken to prevent similar issues in the future. It also "wished to apologise on behalf of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
for the original editorial breaches in The Curse of Steptoe and the fact that subsequent remedial action had been ineffective in removing the unfairness."
Wider implications
After complaints about The Curse of Steptoe were upheld, the BBC TrustBBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
said it would write to the BBC Executive requesting that the BBC Editorial Guidelines be revised to address dramatised biopics (also termed "docudrama
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
") with regard to the presentation of fact and the use of dramatic licence. The new set of guidelines were published on 12 October 2010, with Section 6.4.29 specifically addressing "Portrayal of Real People in Drama". Where the drama goes against the wishes of the individual portrayed or their surviving near relatives, approval must be sought from the BBC's Director of Editorial Policy and Standards, and will be given only if three criteria are met: (1) the portrayal is fair; (2) the portrayal is based on a substantial and well-sourced body of evidence whenever practicable; and (3) there is a clear public interest.
Shortly after the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
upheld the further appeal by Corbett’s brother-in-law on 22 December 2010, it was announced that the drama's Executive Producer, Ben Evans, had been made redundant by the BBC, along with 21 other drama production posts. Evans confirmed to The Stage
The Stage
The Stage is a weekly British newspaper founded in 1880, available nationally and published on Thursdays. Covering all areas of the entertainment industry but focused primarily on theatre, it contains news, reviews, opinion, features and other items of interest, mainly to those who work within the...
newspaper that he was leaving the BBC, but refused to comment on whether his redundancy was compulsory or voluntary.
In an article in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper published on 15 January 2011, writer Sarah Dempster pointed out that The Curse of Steptoe and other "nostalgic retellings of the lives of Tony Hancock
Tony Hancock
Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...
, Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.-Early career:...
, Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Charles Williams was an English comic actor and comedian. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the Carry On films, and appeared in numerous British television shows, and radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.-Life and career:Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February...
and Eric & Ernie
Morecambe and Wise
Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, usually referred to as Morecambe and Wise, or Eric and Ernie, were a British comic double act, working in variety, radio, film and most successfully in television. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984...
have been ratings winners, but fictionalised accounts can land the Beeb in hot water", and she questioned whether the latest, examining Hattie Jacques
Hattie Jacques
Josephine Edwina Jaques was an English comedy actress, known as Hattie Jacques.Starting her career in the 1940s, Jacques first gained attention through her radio appearances with Tommy Handley on ITMA and later with Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour...
, will be the last. "The biopic's central tenet appears to be that lurking within a dead star's private life – or rather her "private life" as according to scriptwriter, touchy BBC mandarin, etc – is the secret to their genius or, at the very least, their lasting popularity. While the prurient appeal of such an approach is obvious, there remains the fact that this is someone else's version of events. It reveals nothing. Would anyone have made Hattie if she hadn't been famous? Is the plot interesting enough to stand on its own merits? Not really. So. Enough with this mass light-ent grave plundering. Down with the heritage fossicking, the interpretive biographical brass-rubbing, the wilting tropes, broken metaphorical harnesses, deserted theatres, beige tanktops and indiscriminate mythologisation of performers who happened to live during a perceived Golden Age™ of Our Collective Cultural Past® Let's instead allow our heroes and heroines to gather dust in our memories, their talent allowed to live for ever – free from the reductive pincers of the gimlet-eyed TV biographer – in their films, TV specials and yellowing holiday snaps. It's what they would have wanted."
Cast (in order of appearance)
| Character | Actor |
|---|---|
| Tom Sloane [sic Tom Sloan (broadcaster) Thomas James H Sloan, was a British Broadcaster and Journalist and BBC Head of Light Entertainment during the 'Golden Age of British Television' in the 1960s.-Early life:... ] |
Roger Allam Roger Allam Roger Allam is an English actor, known primarily for his stage career, although he has performed in film and television. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of the stage musical Les Misérables.... |
| Harry H. Corbett Harry H. Corbett Harry H. Corbett OBE was an English actor.Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s... |
Jason Isaacs Jason Isaacs Jason Isaacs is an English actor born in Liverpool, who is best known for his performance as the villain Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, the brutal Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot and as lifelong criminal Michael Caffee in the internationally broadcast American television series... |
| Sheila Steafel Sheila Steafel Sheila Steafel is a South African-born actress who has lived all her adult life in the United Kingdom.Steafel, who was born in Johannesburg, appeared in many classic television series, including: The Frost Report, Z-Cars, Sykes, The Kenny Everett Television Show, Minder, The Ghosts of Motley Hall,... |
Zoë Tapper Zoe Tapper Zoe Tapper is an English actress who first came to prominence playing Nell Gwynne in Richard Eyre's award-winning film Stage Beauty in 2004. She is known for portraying Anya Raczynski in Survivors and Mina Harker in Demons.-Background:... |
| Joan Littlewood Joan Littlewood Joan Maud Littlewood was a British theatre director, noted for her work in developing the left-wing Theatre Workshop... |
Clare Higgins |
| Young Blonde Actress | Elspeth Rae |
| Ray Galton Galton and Simpson Ray Galton OBE , and Alan Simpson OBE , are British scriptwriters who met in 1948 at a tuberculosis sanatorium, the Surrey county sanatorium near Godalming, on which the sitcom Get Well Soon was based... |
Burn Gorman Burn Gorman Burn Hugh Gorman is an American-born English actor and musician. Burn is best known for his roles as Owen Harper in Torchwood and as William Guppy in Bleak House.-Personal life:... |
| Alan Simpson Galton and Simpson Ray Galton OBE , and Alan Simpson OBE , are British scriptwriters who met in 1948 at a tuberculosis sanatorium, the Surrey county sanatorium near Godalming, on which the sitcom Get Well Soon was based... |
Rory Kinnear Rory Kinnear Rory Kinnear is an award-winning English actor who has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre.-Early life:... |
| Wilfrid Brambell Wilfrid Brambell Henry Wilfrid Brambell was an Irish film and television actor best known for his role in the British television series Steptoe and Son. He also performed alongside The Beatles in their film A Hard Day's Night, playing Paul McCartney's fictional grandfather.- Early life :Brambell was born in Dublin... |
Phil Davis |
| Costume Designer | Ken Oxtoby |
| Wilfrid's Young Blonde Man | Ben Parr |
| Director | Peter Hamilton-Dyer |
| Maureen Corbett | Sophie Hunter |
| Clive Goodwin | Julian Forsyth |
| Plain Clothes Policeman | Jamie Lennox |
| Boy Outside Theatre | Scott McNess |
| Harry's Son | Buddy Wallis |
Transmissions
| Date | Time | Channel | Running Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wed 19 March 2008 | 21:00 | BBC Four BBC Four BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable.... |
66m 44s | Original release |
| Thu 20 March 2008 | 00:05 | BBC Four BBC Four BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable.... |
66m 44s | Repeat |
| Fri 21 March 2008 | 22:00 | BBC Four BBC Four BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable.... |
66m 44s | Repeat |
| Sun 23 March 2008 | 22:45 | BBC Four BBC Four BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable.... |
66m 44s | Repeat |
| Sun 28 December 2008 | 22:30 | BBC Four BBC Four BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable.... |
66m 21s | Revised repeat |
| Mon 29 December 2008 | 03:40 | BBC Four BBC Four BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable.... |
66m 21s | Revised repeat |
| Wed 2 December 2009 | 22:00 | BBC HD BBC HD BBC HD is a high-definition television network provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007... |
65m 35s | Re-revised repeat |
See also
- Steptoe and SonSteptoe and SonSteptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about two rag and bone men living in Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old...
- When Steptoe Met SonWhen Steptoe Met SonWhen Steptoe Met Son is a 2002 Channel 4 documentary about the personal lives of Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, the stars of the longrunning BBC situation comedy, Steptoe and Son. It aired on 20 August 2002....
- Hancock and JoanHancock and JoanHancock and Joan was a 2008 BBC Four biopic television film based on the affair between Joan Le Mesurier and the comedian Tony Hancock. It was first transmitted on 26 March 2008 as part of the Curse of Comedy season. Hancock was portrayed by Ken Stott, Joan by Maxine Peake and John by Alex...
- Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! is a 2006 BBC Four television play starring Michael Sheen as the English comic actor Kenneth Williams, based on Williams' own diaries...
- HattieHattie (television film)Hattie is a television film on the life of the British comic actress Hattie Jacques, played by Ruth Jones, her marriage to John Le Mesurier and her affair with their lodger John Schofield...
- Eric and ErnieEric and ErnieEric and Ernie is a 2011 television film produced by BBC Wales on the early career of the British comic double-act Morecambe and Wise. It completed production in 2010 and premiered on BBC Two on 1 January 2011.-Selected cast:*Bryan Dick - Ernie Wise...
External links
- The Curse of Steptoe at bbc.co.ukBbc.co.ukBBC Online is the brand name and home for the BBC's UK online service. It is a large network of websites including such high profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services co-branded BBC iPlayer, the pre-school site Cbeebies, and learning services such as Bitesize...
- The Curse of Steptoe at the Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...