Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This

Radio Times review

David Threlfall delivers a tour de force as Tommy Cooper, undergoing a transformation that's much deeper than just the donning of a fez.

Cooper's studied incompetence with magic tricks made him a star, but Simon Nye's script centres on Cooper's relationships with two women, his volatile and long-suffering wife Dove (Amanda Redman) and his mistress Mary Kay (Helen McCrory).

Cooper is hard to like - he drinks too much, he's tight with money and he's physically abusive - and by the end of two hours your patience may have run dry.

But Threlfall and Nye work hard to show why Cooper inspired abiding loyalty in both women, and in his friends and fellow comedians, right until that final show when he collapses on stage in front of a TV audience, an extraordinary 15 minutes from Threlfall who does the act note for note.

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