His defence is that he prefers post-work pints to ironing shirts. One recruit who will not be joining them is Private Curtis Dryden, who has been declared absent without leave.

The platoon face their greatest challenge yet this week: a combat exercise in which the rookies must fight highly trained Gurkhas. In the first episode of this new series, which will spotlight a different director every week, critic Ian Nathan breaks down what makes films such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes the sublime classics that they are today. Powell and Pressburger are one of the all-time great film-making partnerships. He wants to put more black people both in front of and behind the camera. As Sir Lenny says, however, he is not interested in maintaining the status quo. Yet through his work as the co-founder of Comic Relief, he was able to channel that anarchic spirit into something with mass appeal. As one of the few black faces on mainstream television during the 1970s and 1980s, his very presence was subversive – and that’s before you consider sketch characters such as the sexually aggressive soul singer Theophilus P Wildebeeste, which Henry admits wouldn’t fly today. It is your classic puff piece, but at least Henry deserves it.īen Elton describes Henry as “mainstream alternative”, which feels apt.

“I can’t imagine not liking Lenny Henry,” says David Tennant, who joins the likes of Richard Curtis, Trevor McDonald and Whoopi Goldberg in rhapsodising his achievements. Following the ITV1 premiere of his drama Three Little Birds on Sunday, this starry retrospective charts the comedian’s rise from working-class child of Jamaican immigrants to national treasure. There are few careers in British television as interesting, or as influential, as Lenny Henry’s.

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