It has been just three months since Lifetime aired their heavily-Lohanified Elizabeth Taylor biopic Liz & Dick (which we discussed at length at the time), but apparently three months is plenty of time between made-for-television movies about Liz Taylor and Richard Burton’s boozy, chaotic relationship, because the BBC is now producing one called Burton and Taylor, starring Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic West.
From the BBC’s announcement:
Dominic West (The Hour, The Wire) and Helena Bonham Carter (Toast, Great Expectations), play the volatile ex-lovers in the story of their ill-fated appearance in a 1983 revival of Noel Coward’s stage play, Private Lives.
Burton and Taylor is a drama about one of the most fascinating, glamorous and tempestuous relationships of the 20th century, that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the two most famous movie stars of their day who played out every high and low of their love affair, their marriages and divorces right in the public eye. [BBC]
Look, I have no doubt this will be a better movie than Liz & Dick. It’s got a superior cast (Bonham Carter is an Oscar winner, and West is McNulty forever and ever, Amen), and a much more accomplished network behind it (the BBC has produced Luther, Sherlock, and The Hour recently. Lifetime made a movie starring Metta World Peace that was based on a book by Nancy Grace), and it just feels like a more professional production (maybe it’s the lack of Lohan, maybe it’s all the British people). But unless someone can look me in the eye and promise me that Helena Bonham Carter will spend the whole film chucking vases at the wall and delivering awful dialogue like “You do know I’m shagging him senseless, don’t you?,” there is a zero percent chance I’m going to watch it.
I’m a bit of a purist.
(Via EW)
