Paul Finchley (Robbie Coltrane) has spent four decades perfecting the art of being liked. One half of the cherished double-act Finchley & Jenkins, he still does the university circuit while his former partner Sir Karl Jenkins (Tim McInnerny) hosts primetime quizzes. The façade cracks when a 1970s rape claim surfaces and Operation Yewtree-style detectives arrive at his Surrey home. Over four nights we watch the grinning mask slip as police, press, wife Marie (Julie Walters) and addict daughter Dee (Andrea Riseborough) learn what the comic kept off-stage.
Writer Jack Thorne refuses the easy catharsis of courtroom confession. Instead he traps viewers inside the shrinking Finchley living room where jokes become alibis, loyalty becomes complicity and every punchline might be evidence. Director Marc Munden shoots in sickly golds and bruised blues, letting Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score of ticking percussion and queasy woodwind do the accusing. The result is less whodunit than social autopsy, asking how Britain turned performers into secular saints and what that adoration let them take.
Channel 4 broadcast the quartet of hour-long episodes across September and October 2016, timing the finale for the week Jimmy Savile’s crimes returned to headlines. It won BAFTA for Best Mini-Series and Coltrane’s performance, toggling between twinkling charm and reptilian panic, was praised as the role that reclaimed him from franchise baggage. The network has never revived the title; four episodes were always the point.
Production Details
Channel 4 / 1 Season / 4 Episodes / 2016
Created by: Jack Thorne
Showrunner(s): Andrew Boswell, Hugo Heppell, George Faber
Writer(s): Jack Thorne
Producer(s): John Chapman
Cinematography: Ole Bratt Birkeland
Music: Cristóbal Tapia de Veer
Main Cast
Robbie Coltrane as Paul Finchley
Julie Walters as Marie Finchley
Mark Lewis Jones as Gerry
Andrea Riseborough as Danielle 'Dee' Finchley
Tim McInnerny as Karl Jenkins
Kate Hardie as Rebecca Thornton
Nadine Marshall as DI Palmer
Babou Ceesay as Jerome Sharpe
Susan Lynch as Christina Farnborough
Kerry Fox as Zoe Darwin
Rosalind Eleazar as Georgina
Jeremy Swift as Simon
