elvisleeboy

Claire McAlpine was a fifteen year old girl who committed suicide. It was later discovered that she had recorded in her diaries that she had experienced sexual encounters with two DJs (Though neither were specifically named).

Surely it goes without saying that this girl deserves to have her story told, and told truthfully.

Not content with their part in enabling the abuse that Savile was regularly dishing out, they add insult to injury by appropriating this girl's tragic story and using her to further push their own ideology - While of course forcing the licence payer to fund it.

The fact is, Claire McAlpine was a white girl with blonde hair. She was not Asian and she did not have dark skin.

The BBC apparently deem the telling of HER story and representing who SHE really was, to be less important than their own obsession with pushing diversity.

This is no reflection on Tia Dutt who performed admirably and bravely, and the acting overall is superb, particularly that of Coogan. Fenella Woolgar as Margaret Thatcher too is excellent.

But Claire McAlpine was a real person. She was not a fictional Disney character. It is inexcusable that she should be portrayed as something she was not.

If indeed Savile did abuse Asian children, they too deserve to have their stories told, and portrayed accurately.

Unfortunately the BBC is less interested in telling us how things really were, and more concerned with their arrogant and sanctimonious need to tell us how they think things should have been - Hypocritical, considering that they were part of the reason they were how they really were.

Those picking out the historical inaccuracies the film is undoubtedly littered with, seem to be missing the point. You will not pass a Beatles exam if you use this film as your primary source of information. But what you will be, is entertained by a film that manages to capture the essence of what made The Beatles so captivating. As well as their music, the public were mesmerized by the interaction between them, almost as though they had created their very own language. They invented and shared a sense of humour that no outsider could penetrate. The film manages to get this across, this to the point where the many factual errors no longer matter.

It is rather a giveaway when a reviewer is from the US, when they describe the accents in the film as 'spot on'. Those from the UK will notice straight away that Stephen MacKenna sports a broad Yorkshire accent, making no attempt at emulating John's distinctive Liverpool accent - Yet, despite this, Mackenna gives us the best portrayal of John Lennon ever committed to screen; His mannerisms, his demeanor, are uncanny and it is a travesty that he has not been recognised for the brilliant job he did.

The rest of the cast are brilliant too, and it is they who lift the film from being an error-ridden waste of time, to a joyous ride.

David Wilkinson as Sutcliffe and Ryan Michael as Pete Best, are two good looking actors, the latter of whom was rather a flattering choice for the average looking drummer.

A good story, brilliantly acted by an excellent cast, but tediously slow at times, and unworthy of five hours of investment.

Another reviewer made a point about how blatantly implausible Rob's lies were and how unlikely it is that an intelligent woman would fall for them. This reviewer neglects to mention that this very point is made in the show, and by the lady in question, who is exasperated retrospectively by her gullibility and voluntary blindness in the face of an obvious liar.

This show would have benefited from being a little leaner. Three hours would have been quite sufficient to tell the story, enabling it to move along more quickly and efficiently. On this occasion, it is not a case of having time to flesh out the characters, who are well enough established within the first hour, and, rather than tension, tedium is the result of the unnecessarily long time taken to reach the end.

The difference between three hours and five hours, is the amount of people I would happily recommend this show to, with fewer likely to take a chance and commit to the latter.