Funny Woman review – Gemma Arterton is absolutely captivating in this Nick Hornby adaptation

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Funny Woman review – Gemma Arterton is absolutely captivating in this Nick Hornby adaptation
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The actor exudes star power in this take on the popular novel. It blossoms into a colourful romp through the swinging 60s that is very much TV as comfort food

Photograph: Ben Blackall/Potboiler Productions; ©Sky Uk LimitedPhotograph: Ben Blackall/Potboiler Productions; ©Sky Uk Limitedand a little bit Carry On. Over six episodes, this charming adaptation of the popular 2014 Nick Hornby novel Funny Girl has taken its new, more mature name and blossomed into a colourful romp through the swinging 60s. Gemma Arterton is Barbara Parker, a beauty queen from the rock factory who loves radio comedy and having a laugh with her dad.

If this is the kind of world she is living in, then Barbara is having none of it. In the way that modern series about bygone eras often do, Funny Woman wages a gratifying, ahead-of-its-time war against sexism on all fronts. Barbara spreads her wings and flees to London, where she hopes to become a performer of some kind. She watches Lucille Ball on the television at the launderette, and dreams about her future. “I’d love to get paid to muck about,” she says, wistfully.

Eventually, she ticks off every item in the “single woman in the 1960s” list: she gets a salt-of-the-earth flatmate, Marge, who hangs her pants up in the kitchen to dry; she has an encounter with a less-than-chivalrous gentleman who promises to show her a good night out; she does some nightclub work that edges more towards glamour than glamorous. Then, finally, she finds herself a real-life old-fashioned showbiz agent in the form of Rupert Everett, hamming it up a storm.

Nothing about this drama much bothers to reinvent the wheel. Barbara is an “ooh, what am I like?” character – a bit ditsy, a bit naive, but a powerhouse of charisma. She puts her northern foot in it, constantly, by pronouncing “eau de toilette” as “eau de toilet”, and says things like, “I look like a boiled egg in a tea cosy!” when trying on bobble hats.

It is familiar, then, but there’s something rather lovely in its familiarity. As Barbara/Sophie, Arterton is captivating. Having star power and managing to convey it on screen are not necessarily the same thing, but she manages to get her appeal across brilliantly. When she starts working with a group of Footlights-ish writers and directors, mostly posh, all southern, it really starts to come together.

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