Made with the participation of both Dyan Cannon and Jennifer Grant, but this was always going to be difficult to pull off because Cary Grant is such an unusual and distinctive character. Jason Isaacs made a good stab at it, and Pope's screenplay faces the actor's difficult life - but ends on his love of having a child and his final happy marriage. The use of latter-day Grant giving an in-person talk to an audience helps to link sequences together in a quite creative way (in that sense its structure is rather like Judy). One little thing - when the previous versions of Grant appear on stage taking a bow, I would have liked to see them all together a bit longer - it's too quick.
Harriet Walter is splendid as his mum, and the most painful bits are when she tells Archie how great his father was when we're all quite clear how great he wasn't. (In this respect the plot jumps rather from that to when she starts saying she's known all along what kind of man he was.) It doesn't shy away from Grant's faults - his pernickety behaviour, his way of controlling Dyan.
Laura Aikman is Cannon, With Kara Tointon, Jason Watkins, Calam Lynch, Dainton Anderson, Linda John-Pierre, Oaklee Pendergast, Ian McNeice & Niamh Cusack (Hitch and Alma).
Directed by Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton). Music by Lindsay Wright, DP Laurens de Geyter, production design Jacqueline Smith... according to IMDB it wasn't edited... it just came like that in 4 ITV hours. It was James Taylor.
California was played by Spain.
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