It is more interesting if you did read Pepys diary. He was a flashlight in to a more gritty time in history. Clearly whoever wrote this only read the cliff notes. They missed the part where his wife almost burned his balls off with a red hot fireplace poker. She did that because she caught him feeling up the maids "cuny". She never found out about his other side pieces. In the plague year he retreated in th a country inn where he dined on venison pasty and , as usual, ogled every comley wench. He said more or less, " Saw this day in church lord (something I forget) and his wife who is a fine figure of a black woman and their daughters. ". It was a different world. No spoilers, the writers ignored all that.
6 Reviews
A sexy role at last!
taranakitimaru24 June 2004
I really enjoyed this programme. Steve Coogan's usual roles involve him being slightly if not completely obnoxious for laughs, showing complete ineptitude in social situations.
The Pepys role however, really let him show another side of his character, and I'd love to see more. I found the character to be sexy, vulnerable and irreverent, intelligent and naughty, a very appealing proposition. Like Rowan Atkinson in the earlier Black Adder series, he shows funny men can be extremely sexy when they take up struggle of an everyman who rather than being the lowest common denominator, is closer to the average thinking man. Someone who can be rational and intelligent, who loses but sometimes wins in social and sexual games, and in love, and has real emotional struggles. More parts like this for Coogan would be great. There is enough buffoonery on the political scene to make me crave sexy funny intellectuals in entertainment. Am I alone?
The Pepys role however, really let him show another side of his character, and I'd love to see more. I found the character to be sexy, vulnerable and irreverent, intelligent and naughty, a very appealing proposition. Like Rowan Atkinson in the earlier Black Adder series, he shows funny men can be extremely sexy when they take up struggle of an everyman who rather than being the lowest common denominator, is closer to the average thinking man. Someone who can be rational and intelligent, who loses but sometimes wins in social and sexual games, and in love, and has real emotional struggles. More parts like this for Coogan would be great. There is enough buffoonery on the political scene to make me crave sexy funny intellectuals in entertainment. Am I alone?
Good luck with this
simoncoram-0676625 March 2022
Unfair critics
messed_up17 December 2003
I read a few reviews of this before I saw it and they all said Steve Coogan acted like "Alan Partridge in a wig", well I'm sorry but he did nothing of the sort! He did a wonderful job, possibly his best acting job yet in my opinion. It is totally unfair for people to compare everything that Steve Coogan does to Alan Partridge. He is a very talented actor and watching this last night I think he proves it!
This is brilliant! Steve Coogan is clever, witty and very good
Ada_Lovelace5 December 2004
This is the movie that Steve Coogan said he wanted to make. His desire was to play someone morally ambiguous and he succeeded brilliantly! His Samuel Pepys was a real person, complex, desiring to be good, and yet aware that society and his own nature conspired against him. Lou Doillion as Elisabeth and Sally Rogers as Betty are also superb - and although when I started watching, I was afraid I would keep seeing Alan Partridge, that wasn't the case. The dialogue was witty, the story well told (brilliantly, in fact) and other standout characters were Will Hewer and Lord Montagu, cleverly cynical and tolerant of Pepys' earnest concern for his job and doing the best in a society that expected him to be corrupt. All praise to the writer and all the actors.
More complete cast list?
andy_grant17 December 2003
I found this an entertaining one-off which certainly enhanced my knowledge of Pepys above the previous level of "didn't he write a diary at some point in the past?"
Being a fan of Coogan it's always difficult to look beyond your expectations of what he's going to be like based on his well-known previous characters. I'm sure it would have become easier had this been stretched out into a mini-series but there you go.
Interesting to see this so soon after the Charles II Power & Passion mini-series which finished a few weeks back. Being contemporaneous (get me!) the two programmes shared a lot of the historical background and quite a few of the characters.
In summary, well worth watching - even without considering the not-insignificant sexual content and gratuitous boob shots :-)
Being a fan of Coogan it's always difficult to look beyond your expectations of what he's going to be like based on his well-known previous characters. I'm sure it would have become easier had this been stretched out into a mini-series but there you go.
Interesting to see this so soon after the Charles II Power & Passion mini-series which finished a few weeks back. Being contemporaneous (get me!) the two programmes shared a lot of the historical background and quite a few of the characters.
In summary, well worth watching - even without considering the not-insignificant sexual content and gratuitous boob shots :-)
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