Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!

Overview

Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! is a 2006 BBC Four television play starring Michael Sheen as the English comic actor Kenneth Williams, based on Williams' own diaries. Cheryl Campbell plays Williams' beloved mother, Lou. The drama received good reviews, The Observer singling out Sheen's performance as "a characterisation for which the description tour-de-force is, frankly, pretty faint praise". The Times compared Sheen's performance to "a diamond that is so dazzling as a result of the expertise deployed in its cutting that you can’t fully focus on the underlying shape of the stone, which is what actually enables it to glitter so spectacularly." Viewing figures were 860,000, including timeshift, making it by far the most popular BBC Four broadcast of March 2006. Sheen's performance won a Royal Television Society award for Best Male Actor, and the play also won two BAFTA nominations.