Last Night's TV: The Model Agency/Channel 4The Real King's Speech/Channel 4 - Reviews, TV & Radio - The Independent

The title of The Real King's Speech implicitly hinted at a gap between the Oscar-nominated movie and the real events. Which made it a little underwhelming that this documentary about the true events essentially confirmed the story told by the film. If you'd already seen it you won't have learnt a lot. Like the film it told an essentially heartwarming story of a troubled man overcoming his stammer with the help of an unconventional Australian therapist, and winning the hearts of a grateful nation in their hour of darkness. It was interesting to hear from some of Lionel Logue's other patients and there were two excellent details that would surely have made the feature film a bit more thistly and indigestible than it actually was. The first was the revelation that George VI had sometimes become so furious about his incapacity that he booted a corgi across the room. And the second was a memorably unctuous bit of broadcast archive from Cosmo Lang, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, who thought it would be helpful to tell the entire nation about the King's impediment. "To those who hear it, it need cause no sort of embarrassment," he said in pricelessly parsonical tones, "because it causes none to him who speaks." A whopping lie for a primate to tell, and wildly counterproductive, too, one imagines.

via independent.co.uk