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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 256058" data-attributes="member: 23">Victoria Wood In Her Own Words(2020)<img src="https://www.comedy.co.uk/images/library/comedies/900x450/v/victoria-wood-in-her-own-words.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />This feature-length documentary serves not only as a whistle-stop tour of Vic’s career on stage and screen but also as a study into who she was as a person, with a little exploration of her unusual childhood and her difficult mother, her marriage to Geoffrey Durham and the themes in her work that came out of her real experiences, such as her hysterectomy and her eating disorder. Overall there’s a better class of contributor than The Secret List had. Those who’ve worked on Vic’s shows include Susie Blake, Duncan Preston, Shobna Gulati and Christopher Harper who played her gay son in Housewife, 49. There are some well known faces such as Gyles Brandreth, Jenny Eclair and Jo Brand. Beyond that it’s an iffy mix of talking heads, mostly “comics” of the ilk that would appear on Richard Osman’s House Of Games to save costs in order to pay for the one celebrity viewers have heard of. There’s the one who won “Celebrity” Mastermind with Vic as her specialist subject. A couple of young women: one with pink hair and one without. And two middle aged men: one with a hipster beard; the other whose huge glasses were wearing him. It sounds a little tacky. And being on 5 I was braced for it to be so. But actually it’s done with taste and fondness.There are many well-chosen clips from Vic’s career, including numerous interviews and films Eric and Ernie. The view of Vic, while appropriately weighted towards admiration of Vic’s talent, is quite balanced. Vic’s lack of self-esteem is touched upon, as is her need to control her environment and to take tough decisions. Christopher Harper mentions being taken aback at her brusque professional detachment when he went to her home to audition, as he’d been expecting the friendly stage persona. Duncan Preston in particular is a delight. He’s quite frank about his own shortcomings saying, for example, that he didn’t feel he fully got what Vic wanted of him in Happy Since I Met You. Duncan also talks about the arguments he had with Vic over his lack of material in dinnerladies, as [USER=21]@Barbara Fan[/USER] was saying about recently. He evidently asked Vic if he could be written out. She firmly told him “no” but  a few days later the rewritten scripts arrived and Stan got to lose his rag over something. It came across that while Vic was willing to be unpopular for the good of the project, she would also compromise and collaborate for the same reasons. Watching this, it became clear how difficult a time she had on dinnerladies. Writing it all. Wanting to micromanage all aspects (the director once asked her to go away when she was behind the camera with him for a scene in which she didn’t appear). Appearing in it. Recording it in front of an audience. Then scrutinising it to see what she wanted to change and staying up all night doing rewrites in order to record it a second time. It must have been a very lonely time. But what incredible results she got because she knew exactly what needed to be done. Still available to view on My5 for anyone who’s interested, In Her Own Words is well worth a look for Vic fans. In the best way possible, it’s been like flashing back over my last six weeks’ viewing history. Which makes it the perfect coda to my Victoria Woodathon.  </blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?