SummaryJulie Walters plays TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse in this television movie. The story follows the formation of Whitehouse's campaign groups and chronicles how she took on BBC Director General Sir Hugh Green.
SummaryJulie Walters plays TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse in this television movie. The story follows the formation of Whitehouse's campaign groups and chronicles how she took on BBC Director General Sir Hugh Green.
Screenwriter Amanda Coe is to be credited not only for developing such rich characterizations, but also for the delicacy of the show's satiric point of view.
Yet for all the gentle ridicule heaped on Walters' character in Filth, her Mary is closer to a three-dimensional figure than Whitehouse's nemesis, BBC head Sir Hugh Greene (Hugh Bonneville).
Filth too often comes off like a strained attempt at reversing the dynamic of a Marx Brothers movie, with Whitehouse the silly, charming agitator and Greene the insufferable aesthete foil with steam blowing out of his ears.