CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Archie on ITV1: Grinding ...

Archie (ITV1)

Rating:

 Trivia question: Who was Mae West seducing when she purred her most famous line, 'Why don't you come up sometime and see me?'

That was a 29-year-old Cary Grant in She Done Him Wrong, one of his first Hollywood roles - not yet a star, just a walking tailor's dummy. 

Still, audiences in 1933 liked their chemistry so much that, months later, the duo did it again, in I'm No Angel.

This time, Mae melted into his arms and growled, 'When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better.' The talkies were made for dialogue like that.

Dialogue has curled up and died in the 90 years since. 

Much of the script in Archie, the Cary Grant life story starring Jason Isaacs, is excruciating - grinding, plodding, repetitive exposition.

Characters are introduced as though they have Post-It notes on their foreheads. 'Ah-ha, here she is - Grace!' cried Cary, welcoming a blonde friend to his Palm Springs ranch in 1962.

'Your Royal Highness, if you don't mind,' she shot back, for the benefit of viewers who hadn't worked out that this must be Grace Kelly.

A cast of A-list lookalikes introduced themselves with the same pedantic precision, from comedian George Burns to Fay Wray, whose name was blazoned across posters in case we got her muddled with Doris Day.

Much of the script in Archie, the Cary Grant life story starring Jason Isaacs, is excruciating - grinding, plodding, repetitive exposition. Pictured: Jason Isaacs as Cary Grant

A cast of A-list lookalikes introduced themselves with the same pedantic precision, from comedian George Burns to Fay Wray, whose name was blazoned across posters in case we got her muddled with Doris Day. Pictured:  Laura Aikman as Dyan Cannon and Jason Isaacs as Cary Grant 

Any muddling was the fault of writer Jeff Pope's storytelling, which turned cartwheels around the 20th century. One moment we were watching TV with a lonely, three-times-divorced Cary in his Beverly Hills home in the 1960s, then we were on stage with him as he had a stroke in the 1980s.

Catapulting back 70 years, we shared his wretched childhood in Edwardian Bristol (though the street looked more like Bradford), zipped ahead to join him on set with Alfred Hitchcock making North By North-West, then travelled to New York with a vaudeville troupe after World War I, when he was still known as Archie Leach.

If you're familiar with the Cary Grant story, it's just about possible to follow these ricochets. If you've never heard of the man, making sense of all this must be like doing a jigsaw in the dark.

Isaacs opts to do an approximation of the actor's distinctive transatlantic drawl, rather than a direct impression. This is a mistake, because Grant's voice is one that sounds all wrong unless you get it exactly right.

Doubly unfortunate for Isaacs, we've recently been treated to a couple of pitch-perfect impressions. Ben Whitehead's recreation of Peter Sallis's voice as Gromit's lord-and-master, Wallace, was a joy in Vengeance Most Fowl on Christmas Day. 

And if you missed 007's home movies in From Roger Moore With Love on BBC2 that night, do seek it out — Steve Coogan's voiceover, as Sir Rog himself, is a delight.

Speaking of Christmas entertainment, Laura Aikman was brilliant as Sonia in Gavin And Stacey — and, playing Grant's girlfriend Dyan Cannon, she's the best thing about Archie too.