Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Charlize Theron, John Lithgow, Emily Watson

Director: Stephen Hopkins

The film: If you reckon that made-for-TV movies are all hammy, think again. Life and Death of Peter Sellers shatters this notion. The biggest surprise of this collaboration between the film divisions of TV heavyweights HBO and BBC is that they managed to secure such a great cast for a one-off, small-screen production.

It may be a one off, but it's long - just short of two hours. Career-wise, British comedian Peter Sellers covered a lot of ground, so it has to be this length (any longer would mean a series). The feature keeps a selective focus on Sellers' career, as did author Roger Lewis, whose biography was adapted for this film.

Although the career chronology begins with an anarchic live studio performance of BBC Radio's The Goons, which launched Sellers, there are plenty of omitted movies as the CV sequence builds, with the plot dropping in on film sets where he acted. Most glaringly missed is The Party, a comedy landmark that gets little more than a passing nod in a psychedelic drug-addled vision.

Sellers, the seemingly introverted man off-screen, led a wild life. The film tells of various periods of alcohol, narcotic and sexual excess. Sellers is portrayed as mostly insecure in professional and personal matters, and somewhat delusional. Most embarrassingly, he mistakes Sophia Loren's flirtatious character as real and acts on the misconception.