Steptoe & Son (remade in the U.S as 'Sanford & Son') was one of the seminal British TV sitcoms of the 1960s, and owes a lot to the 'Angry young man' style of theatre and film that came the decade before. Out of that theatre came a slew of gifted actors like Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Richard Harris, Richard Burton, Laurence Harvey and the underrated Harry H Corbett.
That Corbett's career never reached the heights of the others is the subject of this solid and extremely well acted drama about how he found such success in the BBC sitcom that he was forever stereotyped and unable to break the mould or be accepted as the accomplished stage actor he was. 'Curse' is indeed apt to this predicament, the shows immediate success destroyed any chance he had of regaining his serious career. As he so poignantly states in one scene (and i admit i'm paraphrasing here) "I will forever be known as a rag and bone man".
Jason Isaacs does a splendid job as Corbett, his optimism slowly wearing away as his TV star shines. Trapped by immediate success he rues the day he agreed to do the show. At first the resemblance between the younger Corbett and Isaacs is superficial but once the show reappeared after a 5 year break in the 1970s, the resemblance between the two is striking, and the mannerisms are uncanny too (even the voice). Praise too for Phil Davis for his excellent portrayal of the sad and lonely Brambell, a man who also rues the day he did the show, but for very different reasons.
I cannot fault the two leads and all the actors are marvellous as is the period detail. My grumble is that this could have been a much better drama if the script had been longer and taken the film to a more logical conclusion (Corbetts death in 1982). It is well known that Corbett or Brambell didn't really get on (amazingly Brambell was only 13 years older than Corbett)so a deeper insight into that conflict would have been good. It would also have made more sense to show the ill fated tour of Australia and their post-Steptoe careers, and oddly no mention is made of the two Steptoe feature films they did in the early 1970s.
However this drama shows that Isaacs is a much better actor than his Hollywood career has so far shown. Phil Davis is also still one of the best supporting actors in Britain.
