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Her Big Chance is the fourth of 12 episodes based on the original Alan Bennett scripts, but with new actors.
Jodie Comer plays Lesley, and we know her character is an actress, so when she opens by saying she “shot a man“, I was already ahead of reckoning it was part of a programme and not a real-life occurrence.
Lesley gets a chance to go off to Zimbabwe for an audition, but they’re making specific videos for the West German market, and given how she talks about it, I’m expecting things to not exactly be ‘on the level’, however naive she seems.
Despite all this, while she prepares to play the role of a woman called Travis – who spends all of the film wearing a bikini whilst on a yacht, she bemoans that the attention to the cast on-set is not as good as her biggest role, playing Chloe in Tess, directed by Roman Polankski.
Also, when she makes reference to being in Crossroads, I think – like the episode which mentions cassette Walkmans, some references should’ve been updated. Jodie Comer’s too young to have had a regular role in Crossroads, so why not update to Corrie or Eastenders?
With Her Big Chance, you get the idea of where the plot for this one is going, and it’s not quite as engaging as the first three. It also does run on too long at 42 minutes.
Maybe there’s something in there that I just didn’t get, but this one didn’t resonate like the others so far, and I’m left waiting for a pay-off that doesn’t come.
Her Big Chance: Talking Heads is on BBC1 on Monday June 29th at 8.45pm. The series is not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
However, you can also the Original Talking Heads series on DVD.
The entire series is now available on the BBC iPlayer.
Score: 4/10
Director: Josie Rourke
Writer: Alan Bennett
Lesley: Jodie Comer
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.