Babs was a joyfully camp tribute to a national treasure – review
Barbara Windsor is such an institution that we tend to think we know her personally. But as Tony Jordan’s affectionate biopicBabs (BBC One) pointed out, there’s a lot more to this life lived in the spotlight than meets the eye.
Four actresses (plus a cameo from Windsor herself) fleshed out the story of the Carry On star and EastEnders matriarch. Each was terrific in her own way, but Samantha Spiro as the fiftysomething actress, down on her luck and reduced to appearing in end-of-the-pier shows, brought a throat-catching empathy to the role that was very special.
It was through her disillusioned eyes that we looked back across a life dominated by Windsor’s father, John Deeks, a mercurially charming yet nasty character (terrifically caught by Nick Moran) who appeared to Windsor as a ghost and who the actress proceeded to talk to as she examined his influence on her life and career.
It was Deeks who coached her in the song On the Sunny Side of the Street, her performance of which persuaded so many in the early years that she had a certain “something”. Among them was Ronnie Scott (Ross Green), who gave her a break singing in his Soho club. More impressively, radical director Joan Littlewood (Zoë Wanamaker) saw in Windsor a serious talent, casting her in two of her most celebrated productions, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be and Oh, What a Lovely War! – the latter on Broadway. No line in Jordan’s beautifully constructed script had more resonance than Littlewood’s harsh advice concerning the Carry On films: “If you do it, all you’ll ever be is the sexy little blonde.”
Jaime Winstone portrayed Windsor at that age, capturing the rawness of her talent, her wide-eyed lust for life and fatal attraction to bad boys such as first husband Ronnie Knight and his gangster pals, the Krays. Part of the joy of Babs was its snap portraits of the names she rubbed shoulders with: Warren Beatty (Tom Forbes), Jayne Mansfield (Jerry-Jane Pears) and, naturally, Kenneth Williams (Robin Sebastian).
But most successful were the scenes with Spiro looking back to find meaning in all this, and how a late-in-life relationship with her younger, third husband Scott (Charlie Archer), finally laid the ghost of her father to rest. Babs was undoubtedly rose-tinted in parts, but it was also heart-warming and a joyfully camp tribute to a national treasure.
Gangsters, sailors, and house fires: Barbara Windsor, Charles Hawtrey, and life after Carry On Barbara Windsor career highlights
