The Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story

A cult figure in his own lifetime, DJ and comedian Kenny Everett was something of a private enigma. In this dramatisation of his turbulent rise to TV fame, we get a glimpse behind the façade, with Everett's iconoclastic shoes ably filled by Oliver Lansley. Best value are the uncanny impressions of Kenny's best-loved TV characters, strutting across the screen to signpost the biopic action, while Katherine Kelly lends moving support as Everett's long-suffering wife Lee.

Kenny Everett was a man who always knew when to go too far. He was also an acquired taste; a thoroughly tiresome attention-seeker or a comedy genius, depending on your viewpoint.

This tender, ebullient biopic, featuring a tour de force from Oliver Lansley as Everett, charts an eccentric life, from Everett's early years as a DJ on the pirate station Radio London, to his complicated relationship with
the BBC. But its focus is the unconventional marriage of Everett, a guilt-ridden, closet gay, and his wife Lee (the brilliant Katherine Kelly).

Everett was hard work - needy, annoying and forever hiding behind silly voices and pantomime TV characters such as Sid Snot and Cupid Stunt, who are all played by Lansley, popping up to provide an off-kilter narration. Lansley is sensational: eye-popping, mugging and infuriating one minute, petulant and bereft the next. Best Possible Taste could slip into tears-of-a-clown cliché but, somehow, it doesn't.

Professionally, Kenny Everett has much to answer for. The DJ's anarchic innovations in broadcasting inspired everyone from Noel Edmonds to Chris Moyles to conjure up their own increasingly inferior versions. Personally, too, his life was chaotic, with years spent trying to reconcile the fact that he loved his wife but 'fancied Burt Reynolds'. Tim Whitnall's affectionate, even-handed biopic ties the two together beautifully, tracing the erstwhile Maurice Cole's career of delighting the public and cocking a snook at authority while edging, with considerable difficulty, out of the closet. It most obviously invokes BBC4's Python meta-biopic Holy Flying Circus, messing around with dramatic convention and reduces the fourth wall to rubble courtesy of Everett's army of alter egos. Katherine Kelly lends sympathetic, nuanced support as Kenny's wife, Lee Middleton, but really, this is The Oliver Lansley Television Show. Lansley - previously a jobbing comic actor - simply is Everett, in all his needy, contrary, charismatic brilliance. No lazy caricature, this is total immersion. A Bafta nomination is the least he deserves - it's a stunning performance.

TV review: Best Possible Taste

What got lost in all this was any real sense of what made him the star he unquestionably was.

Kenny Everett was brilliantly funny

Best Possible Taste: the Kenny Everett Story (BBC Four, Wednesday) dramatises the DJ's colourful life, writes Ben Lawrence.

Oliver Lansley gives a terrific performance in Tim Whitnall's biopic of the anarchic DJ Kenny Everett, which is partly framed around his relationship with the long-suffering Lee Middleton (Katherine Kelly). Middleton may have been Everett's rock, but it is Everett's mad genius that this film really salutes as it explores his struggle to contain his sexuality and his rollercoaster career - which took in everything from groundbreaking radio and TV shows to an infamous appearance at a Young Conservatives Conference.

The best possible way to remember a true pioneer

A biopic of Kenny Everett should be compelling TV, says James Rampton.

I recommend Best Possible Taste, a warm, witty and respectful tribute to the ground-breaking DJ and comedian Kenny Everett that, while never shying away from the more troubled aspects of his character, actually goes out of its way to celebrate his genius.

Closer in spirit to the delightful Eric & Ernie and Tony Roche's winningly irreverent Holy Flying Circus - Ev's comic alter-egos, from Sid Snot to Cupid Stunt, act as a Greek chorus throughout - it's clearly a labour of love from screenwriter Tim Whitnall, whose ability to write about comedians with affectionate insight was previously established by his award-winning stage-play Morecambe.

With Ev's ex-wife and soul-mate Lee and his key collaborator Barry Cryer both acting as consultants, Whitnall's film abounds with a sense of anecdotal charm and detail that so many of these biopics lack. Sure, it begins with our hero recovering from a suicide attempt, and pivots around his struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality, but it never treats him crassly. Instead he's portrayed as an inveterate rebel with a self-destructive streak, whose total mastery of his craft clashed with his private anxieties. That's artists for you.

Framed as an unorthodox love story between Ev and Lee, it's a touching portrait of a sensitive, brilliant, loveable, maddening man trying to find his place in the world, before tragically passing away years before his time. Newcomer Oliver Lansley is simply outstanding in the lead role, inhabiting Ev's various personae - including his softly-spoken actual self - with uncanny accuracy and depth. If this magnificent performance isn't rewarded with a BAFTA next year, then I'll shake my fist at the sun in anger. That'll show them.

Ex-Coronation Street actress Katherine Kelly provides excellent support as the strong-willed Lee, and there are even a few colourful cameos from Freddie Mercury, Michael Winner and Dickie Attenborough (the latter essayed by Simon Callow in Full-Callow mode).

While many of these biopics often look as though they were made for the price of a packet of Swan Vestas, director James Strong does wonders with his resources here, producing a beautiful, inventive piece that its late subject may well have approved of. Alas, the budget cuts at BBC Four suggest that this will be their last drama for quite some time. But at least they've gone out on a high.

Video: Katherine Kelly on playing Mrs Kenny Everett

The actress played Becky MacDonald in Coronation Street and her latest TV role sees her playing the wife of Kenny Everett.

Katherine says Kenny and his wife Lee were very much in love even though Kenny was gay.

Katherine also says that Lee was very emotional when she saw Oliver Lansley, the actor who plays Kenny because his portrayal was so good.

Katherine Kelly interview

She made her name as Weatherfield's mouthy Becky, but there's been no rest for Katherine Kelly since she quit Coronation Street's cobbles. She pops up in a touching biopic about the late Kenny Everett, in which she plays the quirky star's ex-wife, Lee.