The Curse of Steptoe

The Curse of Steptoe is a television play which was first broadcast on 19 March 2008 on BBC Four as part of a season of dramas about television personalities. It stars Jason Isaacs as Harry H. Corbett and Phil Davis as Wilfrid Brambell. The drama centres on the actors' on- and off-screen relationship during the making of the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, and is based on interviews with colleagues, friends and family of the actors, and the Steptoe writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The screenplay was written by Brian Fillis, also responsible for the similarly themed 2006 drama Fear of Fanny, which is about television personality Fanny Cradock off-screen. The 66-minute film is directed by Michael Samuels and produced by Ben Bickerton. The drama was widely acclaimed and won the Royal Television Society Award 2008 for "Single Drama". However, the drama generated controversy due to perceived historical inaccuracies, and following complaints to the BBC by Corbett's family, two revised versions of the drama have been broadcast. Despite these revisions, an investigation by the BBC Trust found that the drama was still unfair and inaccurate. DVDs of the drama have been withdrawn from sale, and there will be no future broadcasts without further editing. Plot summary The play covers the entire history of the televised series, skipping over the five-year break between 1965 and 1970 when no episodes were recorded. It starts with Corbett, then a rising Shakespearean actor, starring as Richard II at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, looking beyond that to Henry V at the Old Vic, and tipped to eclipse Gielgud. Meanwhile, across town at the BBC Television Centre, writers Galton and Simpson are no longer working on scripts for comedian Tony Hancock, and are given a free hand. They write a series of one-off plays starring actors, not comics who will expect every line to contain a laugh.