What A Performance! Pioneers Of Popular Entertainment

During the war we were all so fit and healthy - so the historians and nutritionists always say. Rationing cut out most of our sweets and chocolate and everyone who had the space was encouraged to plant an allotment and grow their own vegetables. Whilst the wartime diet might not have been particularly rich and appetising, it was healthy.

So if the war and privation had unintended consequences for our diet, what did it do for entertainment? As food took on a dual role - to keep people productive rather than just fed - so did popular entertainment which now had the task of raising morale besides simply providing some distraction and laughs.

This episode looks at acts such as The Andrews Sisters and the comedian Max Miller, known as "The Cheeky Chappie", who kept spirits up during the war.

But in the post-war era, stage acts quickly seemed old-fashioned as they faced competition from the daring new American sound of rock 'n' roll as well as the increasing popularity of television.

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").

What a Performance! review

The good old days weren't that good after all.

What A Performance! review

Is that Les Dawson after a diet? No it's Frank Skinner in a dress.

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.

Why pretend that Victorian music-hall comedy was funny?

The strangest thing is that the presenters apparently considered that part of their brief was to pretend that everything we saw remains pure comedy gold.

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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.