Peter Bowker

The 4th best programme of 2011 according to the Radio Times.

This fond look at the early struggles of Morecambe and Wise was no broad-brushstrokes biopic. Rather, it was an accumulation of lovely detail: the down-at-heel venues, the pushy parents, how the double act evolved. Writer Peter Bowker even had room for the duo's harmonica-tootling stooge, Arthur Tolcher. The very definition of "affectionate", Eric and Ernie was a series of revelations: that Vic Reeves ought to take more straight roles; that funny can flip to poignant without being crass; and that Daniel Rigby's Eric wasn't just an uncanny impersonation - it was a stunning performance, full stop.

Say what you will about BBC Drama, they do a very nice line in showbusiness biography. Written by Peter Bowker and based upon an idea by Victoria Wood, Eric and Ernie, exploring Morecambe and Wise's formative years, was one of the best I've seen.

The casting was spot on. Daniel Rigby and Bryan Dick were not just vocally and visually uncanny as the duo, they captured every mannerism and even reproduced their comic timing. Most remarkable of all, their recreation of Eric and Ernie's stage act came over as fresh and genuinely funny.

To see the two great comedians resurrected so comprehensively was almost sufficiently thrilling, but it would be a shame to allow the virtuosity of Rigby and Dick's performances to obscure a beautifully crafted, poignant, witty and gentle drama about friendship, family and showbusiness struggle.

"Big head, short legs" was the young Eric's initial reaction on meeting Ernie Wiseman, already a star on the West End stage and celebrated as "Britain's Mickey Rooney". But from inauspicious beginnings a firm friendship grew, out of which sprang their double act.

Victoria Wood played Eric's pushy mum Sadie, vicariously revelling in her son's onstage success, with Jim Moir - you know, Vic Reeves - as her long suffering and overlooked husband George.

I hate that title card which tells you that while a drama is based on a true story, some details have been changed for "dramatic effect". What it means, essentially, is that real life wasn't felt to be exciting enough and it always leaves you wondering about the status of what you're watching. Something of a tribute, then, to Peter Bowker's script (and to an excellent cast) that thoughts of authenticity evaporated fairly quickly as you watched Eric and Ernie, his account of the early career of one of Britain's best loved double-acts.

Bowker's drama was actually a three-hander: Eric's mother, Sadie, didn't get title billing, but turned out to be the core of the thing, a woman whose determination to get her son into showbiz overrode his own indifference. "Never mind, son," Eric's father consoled him as he returned from a talent contest brandishing the winner's trophy, "'Appen you'll lose next time." In that exchange you got a sense of an ordinary boy helplessly caught up in someone else's ambitions; for Sadie, though, this wasn't a career by proxy but simple maternal concern: "You make people laugh," she told her reluctant star, "you're a lovely dancer and you can hold a tune... but more than that - and I mean this as the mother that carried you and bore you and raised you - you aren't any good at anything else." She saw that it was showbiz or nothing.

The partnership with Ernie began in rivalry (fighting over the blankets in a reluctantly shared bed) and then mellowed into a friendship, occasionally tinged with envy or resentment but only suffering one long rift, after their first disastrous foray into television, which was played here as a capitulation to metropolitan arrogance and a betrayal of their own comic instinct, painfully developed on a music-hall circuit of grotty digs and merciless audiences. A betrayal, too, of Sadie, whose shrewd advice was temporarily set aside. In total, six performers played Eric and Ernie, and not one of them let the others down - though the Erics, in the drama as in the original act, seemed to have a lot more fun.

Eric, Ernie and the under-rated genius of Peter Bowker

It's one thing to make drama out of big, splashy, life-changing events -- births and deaths and alien invasions -- but there's something special about a writer who can make life's tiny triumphs and disasters sparkle.

Television Review: Eric and Ernie

We have many wonderful hours of Morecambe and Wise shows which will undoubtedly be enjoyed for years to come. This drama devised by Victoria Wood and written by Peter Bowker deserves to be enjoyed along with them. Not only is it a fitting tribute to a great comedy double act, but its the first in such dramas that can be appreciated by the whole family - and that's probably how Eric and Ernie would have wanted it.

You can warm your hands on the waves of affection that waft from writer Peter Bowker's funny, sweet-natured look at the early years of our most beloved comic partnership, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

We follow the duo just before they hit the really big time, from their first meeting when they were both child stars on the same bill, through the days touring grotty clubs and music halls, right up to their first, disastrous television appearance: "Northern comedy just doesn't play on television," says a snitty BBC exec, before forcing the lads into a series of lame, generic TV sketches.

The evolution of the surreally brilliant act that was to make them adored is nicely done, thanks to Bowker's light touch and to a smashing cast, particularly comedian Daniel Rigby as the genial, uncomplaining but sharp-witted Morecambe, who manages both to look and sound like Eric without resorting to caricature. Bryan Dick is grafter Ernie, whose forbearance is frequently tested by his partner.

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.

They brought us all a little sunshine

Peter Bowker, author of a new TV drama about Morecambe and Wise, explains the extraordinary affection so many of us still feel for Eric and Ernie.

Interview: Vic Reeves

"I loved George on paper," Vic Reeves says of Peter Bowker's script, "and I loved him even more when I got to put on his clobber and speak his words."