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As a child growing up in the UK in the late 60's and early 70's, it was impossible to miss Hughie Green on ITV with shows like "Double Your Money", "Opportunity Knocks" and even the one I remember most, the short-lived "The Sky's The Limit". Thus I was bound to be fascinated by this warts and all dramatisation of his life and times, even if ultimately, as so often is the case with these fact-ion portrayals, one suspects a good deal of licence is taken with the truth. Was Green for example haunted by the image of his mother caught in-flagranto while his father wept downstairs? Did he late in life actually attend incognito a premiere where his unwitting illegitimate daughter, the TV personality, Paula Yates, was making an appearance? Are we seriously expected to believe that the arch-conservative Green watched and railed at Bob Geldof on Live-Aid, as his unbeknownst errant son-in-law? Somehow I doubt it. However as tabloid-TV drama it certainly kept me watching, right from his early days as a womanising TV star on the up, to his rivalry with his nemesis Jess Yates, culminating in the long-standing affair with the latter's wife which eventually produced Paula, to his days as a washed-up yesterday man, when in common with other 60's and 70's UK light entertainment luminaries like Benny Hill, Jimmy Saville and Mike Yarwood (to name but three), he found himself on the scrap-heap, totally out of touch with the times. Although showing Green for the egotistic and selfish monster he seemed to be, less convincing, by far are the attempts by the writer to effectively balance the ledger, at one point showing Green as an unlikely crusader against TV's in-bred racism and at another ludicrously inventing the phrase "reality TV" (although I suspect an in-joke here!). I also didn't quite get from the show the scale to which Green really was a major star, imitated by dozens of impressionists and dominating early evening TV in ways which Terry Wogan and Noel Edmunds could only dream. Trevor Eve is almost but not quite there with his characterisation, voice and physical transformation. Good at least to see him eschewing the irritating mannerisms which so mar his appearances in the UK crime series "Waking The Dead". The supporting actors playing the lesser known figures in Green's life are very good, although it was harder to accept the portrayals of better known figures like Jeremy Isaacs and of course Jess Yates, where I think a closer physical resemblance would have helped veracity. All in all though, to mix my cult UK talent show-metaphors, "O'ill give it 7" - out of ten. And I mean that most sincerely!
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