Alan Carr’s new autobiographical sitcom, Changing Ends, is that most joyous of things: a smart, inventive, honest and charming coming-of-age story. It’s also, in the case of Carr, the making of a national treasure.
It comes as no great surprise to learn that Carr, perhaps best known for his Chatty Man talk show on Channel 4, was as camp as a row of tents as a lad in the 1980s. But it takes the acting talent of another nascent national treasure, Oliver Savell, to capture the full fussy, theatrical, mincing Alan-ness of the junior Carr. Like Carr himself, who pops up with catty cameos and scene-stealing one-liners, Savell has a preternatural gift for performance. With his big gap teeth, oversized specs and effete ways, Savell, as they used to say in those deep husky-voiced Hollywood trailers, “IS” Alan Carr.
