Suzy Klein

Radio Times review

Suzy Klein and Frank Skinner conclude their hands-on history of popular British entertainment. If you don't mind the chummy flippancy (that Phil and Kirstie thing of cheerily bickering on the voiceover - stop it!) and the indulgence of Klein and Skinner having a go at everything, it's a stirring nostalgia trip that gets under performers' skins rather than merely eulogising them.

While Skinner builds up to a performance as Max Miller and Klein learns to be all three Andrews Sisters, the pair also have a crack at skiffle, and Wilson, Keppel and Betty's sand dance. And Barry Cryer tells an A1 anecdote about a man being thrown out of the Windmill Club for bringing binoculars.

As the 19th century became the 20th, music hall morphed into something called "variety" - a showcase for acts such as "the stud of cantankerous and educated ponies, introduced by Mr Boswell". Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein pick up the story, celebrating megastars such as Harry Lauder, gender-bending Vesta Tilley, Gracie Fields and that leer on legs, the brilliantly disgusting George Formby, with his little stick of Blackpool rock ("It's nice to have a nibble at it now and again").

Frank 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.

What 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.

What 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.

This 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.