Cilla   Starring: Sheridan Smith Distributor: ITV Studios Global Entertainment RRP: £14.99 3711536663 5 0371153 66634 Certificate: 12 Release Date: 06 October 2014

For a generation Cilla Black was known for her successful television career, where her everyman persona made hits of Surprise Surprise (1984–2001) and Blind Date (1985–2003). However, in the '60s and '70s Priscilla White was at the forefront of the emerging Merseybeat music talent, along with The Beatles...

Cilla (2014 - 3 Eps - 2hrs, 35 min, 49 sec) is a dramatized telling of Cilla’s earlier career as an interpreter of songs. The drama was written by Jeff Pope, who recently won an Oscar for the screenplay of Philomena.

When we first meet Cilla (Sheridan Smith) she is working as a typist and singing with various groups around Liverpool, including The Beatles. The music scene at the time was quite small, so it is little wonder that she is friends with Ringo Starr and through him the other Beatles. We are also introduced to Bobby Willis (Aneurin Barnard), who works in a bakery, but is really a bit of a chancer and convinces Cilla that he can be her manager.

The story is not just about Cilla, but also about her relationship with Willis. Through this, the show exposes both the class and religious divisions, which at the time were bad enough to tear a family apart. Cilla is a Catholic, Willis Protestant, not that it made a difference to the two young people, but Willis’ father cannot countenance his son taking up with a Catholic girl, and Willis’ love for Cilla was such that he chose to walk away from his family. The story follows the two through Cilla’s failed first audition for Brian Epstein, then her eventual success, which strained her relationship with Willis to breaking point as Cilla single-mindedly pursues success.

Cilla Black had a very powerful and distinctive voice, through tracks like 'Anyone Who Had a Heart', 'Alfie' and 'You're My World', Cilla, for a time, dominated the charts, with renditions of songs which still hold up as classics today. Smith sensibly does not try and mimic Cilla’s voice, except to add a twanged nuance to her voice. She sings well enough not to have to have Cilla overdub her vocals and that would have been quite jarring, pulling the audience out of the story.

As the story concentrates on her rise to fame, the man who made it all happen for her, Brian Epstein (Ed Stoppard) is the third major character. Epstein’s homosexuality, which at the time was a criminal offence, hovers around the story, subtly at first with Cilla not understanding why he would buy young men new suits, to a much more overt exploration of the destructive effect Epstein’s relationships had on him.

At times, this is not a flattering portrait of Cilla and it is only when you watch the extra does Pope disclose that Cilla was refreshingly honest and open about how single minded her desire to succeed was, even to the point of denying Willis his own chance of becoming a recording artist, even though he had written the B side to her first single and had appeared as a backing vocalist. Nor does she seems willing to give Epstein much room, even though his world was falling apart, which would lead to his suicide. Luckily she learns the price of success in time to reunite with Willis, they eventually married and he remained her manager until his death.

This sounds a bit dour and the show does become a little dark towards the end, but the beginning is full of life and the great sounds of the Merseybeat. Under everything else Cilla is a love story as Cilla and Willis are pulled together, and then pulled apart by Cilla’s success.

The disc has one extra, Cilla Portrait of an Icon (17 min, 39 sec) which looks at the making of the story.

If you missed it, when it was on television, then this drama is well worth picking up, if for no other reason to remember just how great a singer Cilla Black was.

8

Charles Packer