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What a Performance! Pioneers of Popular Entertainment

Episode 1: Music Hall

Duration: 58 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC FourLatest broadcast: on BBC Four

Comedian Frank Skinner and music presenter Suzy Klein step out in the first part of this highly entertaining and thought-provoking three-part series which explores a century of popular entertainment from the Victorian age of the music hall, through the golden age of 20th-century variety to the working men's clubs of the 1950s.

The first episode looks at the birth of 19th-century music hall, the colourful and sometimes dangerous world of its entertainers and the audiences whose lives were changed by what was Britain's first mass entertainment industry. Together, Suzy and Frank get under the skin of some of its greatest stars - some of whom, like Marie Lloyd and Champagne Charlie, are household names to this day, while the eccentric Victorian comic Dan Leno, later copied by Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, have fallen into obscurity.

Not only do Frank and Suzy dig into the history of these stars and the world from which they emerged, but they also study their acts and try their hand at performing them at the end of the show. Show less

Contributors

Presenter:
Frank Skinner
Presenter:
Suzy Klein
Production Company:
Liberty Bell Productions
Executive Producer:
Jamie Isaacs
Executive Producer:
Claire Whalley
Director:
Ellen Hobson
Participant:
Paul Smith
Participant:
Vicky Butterfly
Participant:
Jimmy McWilliams
Participant:
Andy Eastwood
Sweeney Todd:
Terence Frisch
Participant:
Michael Kilgarriff
Participant:
Richard Schoch
Participant:
Fern Riddell
Participant:
Caroline Radcliffe
Participant:
Johnny Dennis
Participant:
Tony Lidington
Participant:
Louise Wingrove
Participant:
Jan Hunt
Participant:
Derek Scott
Participant:
Laurence Payne
Participant:
Tim Cockerill
Hairdresser:
Christine Vidler
Participant:
Harry Brunjes
Participant:
Lenna Cumberbatch

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