There's a new drama to get stuck into on ITV from Thursday and it's focus is one of the most famous British soap actresses of all time.
After all of the adverts and significant hype surrounding it, Nolly launches on ITVX on February 1 with The Crown's Helena Bonham Carter in the lead role of a woman who was formidable as she was talented.
Helena, whose star turn as Princess Margaret captivated fans of the Netflix smash, has been on the interview circuit to promote the three part drama, which is already available to binge in its entirety.
As well as having Helena at its head, Nolly's cast also includes plenty of other familiar faces like The League of Gentleman's Mark Gattiss and Happy Valley's Colm O'Neill.
Who is Nolly?
Nolly is all about Noele Gordon (Nolly to her friends) who was a legend in her own lifetime. As flame-haired widow Meg Richardson in the long-running soap opera Crossroads, Noel became of the most recognisable faces on TV in the late 1960s and 1970s, with her character cut from the same cloth as the likes of Elsie Tanner and Bet Lynch.
However, Noele, an eight times TV Times winner for Best Actress, had the rug pulled from under when, in 1981, at the height of the show’s success and the peak of Nolly’s fame, she was axed from the soap.
What made it all a more bitter pill for Noel to swallow, was that it was down without warning and with no explanation, as she was told by her Crossroads' boss “all good things must come to an end."
Nolly is written the critically acclaimed Russell T.Davies, the man who won rave reviews from the superb It's A Sin in 2021. Giving his take on Nolly and the life of the woman who inspired his new drama, he said: "Nolly is the story of the climactic moment in Noele Gordon’s life when she was sacked from her long-running ITV soap opera Crossroads.
"She had been the ‘Queen of the Midlands’ and a television star for decades. But in 1981, she was suddenly, ruthlessly and mysteriously sacked overnight."
He added: "It was done horribly. There was no lunch, there was no dinner, there was no warning. She was very famous, and it was a very public humiliation, and it had always interested me"
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