The lip-syncing may have taken a touch of getting used to \u2014 we know McKellen\u2019s tones so well, yet here was an \u201ceh-up\u201d accent emerging from his mouth. Initially I found myself just listening, trying to imagine how the pair really looked. But soon it was impossible to look away. Without these ingenious scenes \u2014 it must have taken some skill to match the lines and inflections exactly \u2014 we would have missed the glances, the seat-shifting between the dialogue and so on. The approach helped to elevate this far above a straight biography.<\/p>\n
![\"Sir](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/ead6cde8-5700-4b5f-96b6-bcf6496d0ee6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Annabel Smith, right, plays Angela Barratt, a young admirer of Lowry<\/p>\n
BBC\/WALL TO WALL MEDIA\/CONNOR HARRIS<\/p>\n
The story of the interview itself is unusual enough. Lowry, described in the programme as a complex, secretive man, was a reluctant celebrity. Yet when the 27-year-old fan Angela (played with real charm by Annabel Smith) turned up at the artist\u2019s door in 1972 with a reel-to-reel recorder, a single interview turned into a four-year project.<\/p>\n
It became, it was suggested, \u201cthe last words of an artist, setting the record straight\u201d to an enthusiast with no journalistic experience, yet whose questions, couched in ingenuousness, pressed him with gentle tenacity. <\/p>\n
We heard\/saw her probe him, for example, on his lifelong bachelorhood until Lowry suddenly declared, \u201cI might have married a girl, but she died in an epidemic.\u201d \u201cPardon?\u201d she reacted, a touch shocked. In a future world of media scoops, that alone would be a headline.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Ian McKellen at 86: \u2018I\u2019ve had to accept that I\u2019m not immortal\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Lowry came across as blunt (\u201cThe south of England is\u2026 harmless, no guts in it\u2026 dull\u201d), often wry (\u201cAre you really a socialist\u2026? Well, I\u2019ll forgive you!\u201d) and something of a chatterbox once he got started. We learnt so much about him, from his closeness to his parents (his folks thought \u201che was a wee bit batty\u201d) and why he never moved out of home to how he found his niche painting Pendlebury\u2019s townscapes after his family were forced to downsize from their middle-class neighbourhood.<\/p>\n His explanation of how the \u201cbest time of his life\u201d ended in 1932, when his father died, was moving. Yet also touching was his deepening friendship with his young inquisitor. And out of all this, a sense of epitaph grew, like a shadow, for the world with which his name has become synonymous: an industrial Manchester obliterated by the slum clearances; of terraced houses and cotton mills; of hurrying crowds and tightly bonded communities. A vanished North. <\/p>\n After this wholly engrossing hour, an undeniable itch to seek out his paintings, to once again take in those visions of matchstick men, was undeniable. Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a>, the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to what to watch this week<\/a>, and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Was LS Lowry to art what Morrissey was to music? Both are Mancunian observers of ordinary lives and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-446826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Available on iPlayer<\/p>\n