With its handful of wonderful festive episodes, The Royle Family still means Christmas for many viewers. It is a fitting time of year, then, for Caroline Aherne: Queen of Comedy, an intelligent, joyful and sensitive celebration of its late creator and star, which serves as a reminder that she was responsible for much more than one of the finest British comedies of all time. Using a mix of Aherne’s own words, mostly taken from a frank interview with Michael Parkinson in the late 90s, and contributions from home town friends and collaborators such as Craig Cash, Steve Coogan and John Thomson, it tells the story of her brilliant and too brief life.
According to her friends, Aherne was a lifelong television lover, never happier than when she was in her pyjamas watching the box. This documentary is heaven for television lovers. Understandably, the focus is on her two biggest hits, The Mrs Merton Show and The Royle Family, but it dives into the archives and pulls up some real treats. It is fascinating to see snippets of her early career, not only for the quality of the comedy, but for the way a working-class girl from Wythenshawe could end up with a television career, one carved out, you suspect, precisely on her terms.
