Hancock & Joan (2008)

The greatest movie ever!

Really Surprised!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Tony Hancock became one of the key British comedians of the 50s and 60s due to his work on HANCOCK'S HALF HOUR and THE TONY HANCOCK SHOW. Hancock's style is deadpan and miserabilist, and often very funny. He has a hangdog Bilko-like expression, but with none of Bilko's cock-eyed confidence. When Bilko fails, he will try the same lousy idea (changed slightly) the next episode. Hancock is arrogant on the surface but is ultimately a coward who takes all the problems to heart... as if the world is conspiring against him.In real life, Hancock wasn't far removed from his character. Once the HANCOCK shows ended (mostly due his selfish removal of his double-act partner Sid James, and his growing disgust for the writers), he felt he could make it on his own. But he didn't - or couldn't - and ended up doing three shows in Australia before committing suicide in 1968, with a bottle of vodka and a bunch of amphetamines.This is just the sort of story that Hollywood would pick up. There's MAN ON THE MOON and RAY and many more biopics about self-destructive outsiders. But Hancock was never big in America, so it was left for the BBC to do the job in a drama-documentary called HANCOCK AND JOAN.Despite the prestige the BBC has abroad (mostly for its news programmes and natural history documentaries) it has a pretty awful record for TV dramas. Soap operas are the prime-time focus in the UK, but the need to quickly pump out episodes leads to terrible stuff. BBC's higher budget productions are turgid historical dramas which rely mostly on period costumes to try and hide some horribly stagy acting. Dramas set in modern times end up as a shouty low-rent version of Hollywood films and - increasingly - US TV.All this made HANCOCK AND JOAN a pleasant surprise. There's a little shouting in the film, and only at moments when people are angry. It's not shot with much flair, but there's a few moments that raise above usual TV movies. I liked the little introduction of fantasy when Hancock sees a vision of himself as he commits suicide. The shots inside the drunk-tank are also pretty innovative. HANCOCK AND JOAN - of course - has the annoying washed-out colours emblematic of the British style. But the film has enough other things going for it, you can mostly forgive its bland look.HANCOCK AND JOAN was part of a series of BBC drama-docs about British comedians who led messed-up lives. One - FANTABULOSA - is one of the most unintentionally funny things you will see... with Michael Sheen over-acting (as he did in FROST VS NIXON, THE QUEEN and everything else) as Kenneth Williams, star of the CARRY ON movies.But HANCOCK AND JOAN is acted - and written - with real skill. Hancock is hateful at times, but also funny and charismatic. It actually makes sense that Joan (the wife of DAD'S ARMY star John Le Mesurier) would fall in love with him... and that's rare in this sort of thing. I loved the moment where she's screwing Hancock and his mother knocks on the door. "I'm coming!" he shouts. Joan giggles... and so does his mother when he lets her into the room. There's a real tenderness between the characters, based on jokiness and honesty.The moments of madness - including Hancock drunkenly tearing the place apart during a dinner with Joan's parents - are effectively shocking. Joan is an interesting character, vulnerable yet ballsy. She becomes very likable, and her sink into alcohol abuse to try and keep up with Hancock feels credible. The only duff performance is Alex Jennings as John Le Mesurier, which is very self-aware and parodic of the real life man.Anyway, this is a once in a decade, complete recommendation of a British TV drama. HANCOCK AND JOAN is well worth checking out, and streets ahead of celebrated British "realist" films like CONTROL and SOMERS TOWN. And it should work for those who don't even know who Tony Hancock was. It's not an all-time classic by any means, but in the context of British documentary-style stuff, it's one of the very few that feel both genuine and engrossing.

Maxine Peake showed her abilities with a terrifying performance as Myra Hindley. Considering she was opposite Jim Broadbent as Lord Longford and Andy Serkis as Ian Brady, that took some doing.Here, she steals the show with a spellbinding turn as John Le Mesurier's wife Joan. Unfortunately, this drama is out of kilter with the rest of The Curse of Comedy series. All the others cover a timespan during which the subjects were at their peak of success. This covers a two year period several years after Tony Hancock was one of the biggest stars on UK TV with Hancock's Half Hour and Hancock, and also after his unsuccessful film career. The events in this dramatisation bring matters to the conclusion of Hancock's lonely suicide in Austratlia. The death scenes were unsatisfactory, as Hancock sees a ghostly image of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, the character from East Cheam which brought him fame and fortune.A pity we didn't see Ken Stott saying "A PINT? THAT'S VERY NEARLY AN ARMFUL!"

This was the second of the BBC's 'Curse of Comedy' dramas and perhaps the seediest. Based on the memoirs of Joan Le Mesurier about her self-destructive and selfish affair with Tony Hancock in the final years of his life, this does not do any of the characters any favours and, despite fine performances from Maxine Peake, Ken Stott, and Alex Jennings (as John Le Mesurier), places the story firmly in the tatty seaside setting (where in fact the two mismatched lovers go to live at one point).I'm never quite sure what's achieved by taking the real-life problems of TV icons and putting them so baldly on the screen. 'Hancock and Joan', although engrossing and oddly moving at times, felt like an intrusion into private lives which should have stayed private.

This was a superbly well crafted TV drama with cracking performances form both leads that made your heart go out to both characters even though you could not help but see the banality of their relationship and the selfishness both of them showed to all those who loved them. Stott and Peake are both outstanding and I hope they receive credit and praise for their performances (it is good to see Peake moving on from 'Shameless' and I for one never expected such a quality performance of restraint from her). The depiction of Tony Hancock's affair with Joan is not pleasant viewing as most of us will know the outcome from the start and it is certainly not pleasant watching people fall into a circle of disaster all caused by one man's impending sense of doom thoroughly fuelled by chronic alcoholism, and you do really feel for the people around them, especially Joan's husband John (another excellent performance by Alex Jennings). Hightly effective viewing which achieves all it sets out to do.