Hattie.

The overwhelming thought I got watching Hattie on BBC4 last night was, what's the point? So Hattie Jacques had an affair that wrecked her marriage to fellow actor John Le Mesurier. The younger man moves in and the husband is eventually squeezed out. But that was just one aspect of her life. Surely the aim of a biographical drama is to learn about the many facets of the subject's character, so we can better understand what made them what they were. Why we liked, or disliked, them. With Hattie we got none of that. It was like we had to fill in the blanks from what we knew about her. Which, I suppose, to most of us, is very little. Tough matronly type in the Carry On's and Eric Sykes sister in Sykes. Surely this was the opportunity to widen our knowledge, not give us a grubby little episode.

The film itself was well done, if a little plodding. Ruth Jones as Hattie and Robert Bathurst as John Le Mesurier were both very good. However I had a problem with Being Human's Aidan Turner, as John Schofield, the man who destroys the happy home. His London accent seemed forced and strained, like he was auditioning for the next Danny Dyer straight to DVD epic. He makes a better Vampire than he does cockney Lothario. But the real star of the show was Marcia Warren as Esma Cannon, the perennial old biddy from the Carry On's and just about every other British film comedy of the era. She was foul mouthed, cynical and livened up proceedings no end, whenever she was on screen, which was sadly all too brief. I wished we'd followed Esma's story and left Hattie to bonk away in her caravan, on the set of Carry On Cabbie. Perhaps that's an idea for a future hour and a half on BBC4.

The BBC seems to have thrown quite a few of these biopic at us over the last few years. When they work, as with Trevor Eve's excellent performance as Hughie Green, or Michael Sheen's equally impressive Kenneth Williams, they can absorbing television. But Hattie didn't fall into that category. And how long before we start scraping the bottom of the barrel? Are we just ten years away from a Cannon and Ball biopic?

Over.

Hattie is now being repeated on BBC iPlayer.